


The Persistent Mother

by The_Winter_Child



Series: The Battles We Fight [2]
Category: Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic
Genre: Battle of Odessen, Knights of the Eternal Throne, Knights of the Fallen Empire, Knights of the Fallen Empire Spoilers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-06
Updated: 2018-05-26
Packaged: 2018-08-13 11:53:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 23,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7975885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Winter_Child/pseuds/The_Winter_Child
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Senya engages in a fierce battle with her daughter and later embarks on a harrowing escape with her son.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger warning for references to child and domestic abuse (no descriptive examples).

Senya couldn’t breathe.

She was metres above the ground, her legs kicking uselessly for purchase. The unseen noose around her neck tightened, and her hands scrabbled at her throat as if she could pry off the invisible tendrils crushing her windpipe. Her heartbeat pounded on the insides of her skull, louder with each passing second. The pressure in her head steadily increased with all of the blood rushing up, and she knew that sooner or later, the delicate blood vessels in her brain would burst from the unnaturally heightened blood pressure.  If she wasn’t going to die from a crushed windpipe or a broken neck, a brain hemorrhage would kill her.

The Force grip around her neck tightened and she choked out another gasp. Black dots swam around her vision, but she still saw her daughter standing in the distance, one hand gripping a lightsaber while the other was raised, fingers curled up into a fist.

Using the Force, Senya reached out at some of the durasteel piping her daughter had ripped out of the wall and tossed at her earlier. With as much strength as she could muster, she threw the pipe at her daughter. Vaylin deftly jumped out of the way, and Senya felt herself fly across the hangar, hitting a safety railing before crashing into the transparisteel viewport of a parked Zakuulan shuttle and sliding off, hitting the ground with a dull thud. She gulped in lungfuls of cool, fresh air.

She'd used the Force to cushion the blows so she wasn’t too bruised, but the relief to her deprived lungs was short-lived. Incorporeal fingers curled around her throat again, and her boots lost contact with the ground. Senya grabbed at destroyed pipes, trusses, and scrap metal, basically anything within a reasonable distance that Vaylin had torn up and sent flying previously in their brawl, and with the Force, she flung them one after another at her daughter. Most of them missed, but one crumply piece of sheet metal luckily made its mark, smacking her daughter and sending her flying metres off to the side.

It wasn’t much of a distraction, but it gave Senya enough time to catch her breath and regain her bearings. Igniting her lightsaber, she leapt across the hangar, reengaging her daughter in a lightsaber match.

They had originally met up in one of the corridors of the flagship, as per Vaylin’s request. Senya regretted agreeing to do it her daughter’s way, since fighting in narrow corridors didn’t allow for full utilization of her lightsaber prowess. She had fought countless times in passageways in her decades of service, but years of experience didn’t assuage her fears of fighting in cramped spaces. Much to her relief, their brawl had eventually made its way into one of the many hangars, granting her generous room for maneuvering but also awarding Vaylin with a lot more things to uproot and fling at her.

She wasn’t sure if Vaylin had deliberately led her here, or if they just happened to end up fighting in a hangar. Either way, it gave her an added bonus: if the duel started heading south for her, she could always jump onto a shuttle and fly to another hangar. After that, she could make her way to her son.

While her daughter’s lightsaber abilities were still rough around the edges in places, her Force attacks were astounding in their power and unpredictability. Vaylin’s raw power had grown exponentially since their duel on Asylum, and even with Senya’s decades of discipline and experience, her daughter easily gained the upper hand when it came to brawling with the Force. Senya had been tossed around the hangar like a ragdoll, crashing into every surface and shuttle, and if it wasn’t for the Force cushioning the impacts, she wouldn’t be alive.

Being lobbed about the hangar and Force choked weren’t the wickedest things Vaylin did with her powers. In her absence, she had picked up some Force drain ability growing up. Senya suspected that some Exarch had taught her that, or maybe it was Valkorion whenever he’d paid slight attention to her. She refused to think of the unfortunate Knights that her daughter undoubtedly had practiced that on. Her daughter had used that depraved attack several moments during their duel, and it had left Senya struggling to stand upright as her life was siphoned out of her.

The only way to survive this duel was if she’d keep her daughter on the defensive with her lightsaber, and stun her enough somehow that she could make a hasty getaway. It was easier said than done. Even if Vaylin was inexperienced with the lightsaber compared to her, she left no openings for Senya to take advantage of. They had progressed from Senya controlling the flow of their battle with her lightsaber, to Vaylin dominating with her myriad Force talents, and finally to neither of them having any advantage.

“We don’t want you back,” Vaylin said, her singsong voice cloyingly sweet. Senya squirmed internally at her voice before drowning in the misery of the message.

A lump formed in Senya’s throat, a telltale sign that she was going to cry. Arcann might be more receptive to her trying to mend their estranged bond and accept her sincerity of wanting to fix her greatest mistake and regret, but Vaylin…if she was to be honest with herself, she couldn’t see Vaylin coming around anytime soon, and she wasn’t going to come around here in this hangar.

Senya knew she was being cornered into playing her daughter’s psychological game that was to get her emotional enough so that her concentration would falter. It was working, but she embraced the Force for a sliver of peace. Holding onto it comforted her and renewed her resolve. She pressed her attack with various crosswise slashes followed by powerful overhand blows and feints. Vaylin effortlessly countered them, but at least she couldn’t use her Force attacks for the moment.

The Force nagged at Senya frantically, like a toddler pestering at its parents for attention. An inferno erupted across her chest, distracting her. _Is this one of Vaylin’s attacks?_

Her moment of distraction wasn’t lost on her daughter. Vaylin embraced the opportunity and Senya felt herself rise off the ground with unseen hands pressing on her throat. Senya’s attention wasn’t on her current predicament. The Force desperately hounded her for her attention, and the pain grew unabated through her chest. It was as if she’d been stabbed in the chest and her attacker kept twisting the blade to dig at her insides.

She wasn’t sure which would kill her first: her daughter, or the strange heart ailment that was orchestrated by the Force. Black spots and tendrils devoured her vision, and Senya felt her brain starting to shut down from the lack of oxygen. If she was to die here, right now, the only regret she’d have would be not making amends with her son and daughter. Her eyes moved down to Vaylin, and it was difficult to focus on her daughter. What she did see caused fear to jolt through her. It wasn’t the fear of death, but the look on Vaylin’s face was disturbing, to say the least. She didn’t want to die with that visage being the last image she saw, and if she lived through their encounter, Senya could swear by all of the Old Gods that she’d see that face in her nightmares.

Deranged, frenzied and psychotic were the first three words that came to her mind. Vaylin’s eyes were opened wide, the whites clearly visible around the irises. The irises themselves were a sulfuric yellow and inflamed with crimson around the edges, making her eyes so demonic that they were upsetting to look at. But the worst was her mouth. She was smiling, her grin too wide for her face and growing progressively wider as she kept choking her mother to death.

“I’m sorry,” Senya wheezed out. Vaylin had made it clear that remorse was worthless to her, but Senya still felt that it was important for her daughter to at least _hear_ her apology and _remember_ it. She always resented herself for leaving, and she couldn’t change the past, but she could always make the future brighter. Even if Vaylin killed her today, she hoped that there would be a better future where Vaylin could become more level-headed, and that when she was ready, remember her mother’s final apology and find it within herself to forgive her mother. But she wasn’t sure if her daughter heard her over the hum of the lightsabers. The seconds passed, and her eyes grew increasingly dark. There was so much she wanted to say, but she didn’t have the breath to.

_I’m sorry for leaving you when you needed me the most. I’m sorry I couldn’t do more to get you the help you needed. I’m sorry I left you to be abused and used as a tool by your father. I’m sorry I didn’t stand up for you. I’m sorry I made you hate me._

Vaylin shouted at her, but she couldn’t discern the words of the rant through the din of the collapsing hangar. She didn’t have the strength to lift her head, but she had enough left in her to wearily glance up at her daughter. The psychotic grin was gone, replaced by a sneer. Her eyes were so maddened, so terrifying, and the worst part about them was that they _hated_.

“I hate you!” Vaylin screamed at her, the sentence cutting through the air like a knife. And despite the din, Senya heard it, and it broke her heart.

_I’m sorry that I didn’t love you enough._

So she said the only two words that mattered as they encompassed all of her regrets. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she gasped out again and again with the remaining oxygen left in her lungs. Tears trickled down the corners of her eyes, hot on her cheeks. She hung her head and waited for her lungs to stop burning so that she could peacefully float away into the netherworld of the Force.

Her saviour came from an unsuspecting place.

The flagship swayed and shook, causing both of them to lose their balance. Durasteel railings, pipes and other structural components dropped from the ceiling and shuttles slid around on their docking pads. Senya felt the ground rush up to her, and she had never been so thankful to hit the cold durasteel of the floor with her face. She slowly got on all fours, breathed in lungfuls of air and coughed so hard that she threw up. When she stopped retching, she looked up, and to her horror, Vaylin was casually sauntering over, lightsaber in hand.

“He’s dying, he’s dying,” Vaylin chanted gleefully, skipping towards her as if she was a child in the royal gardens.

_Wait, what?_

The childish display was so inappropriate and unnerving that she froze, trying to make her shocked brain process this new development. The Force nagged at her again. This time, so much pain coursed through her chest that she doubled over and clutched at it with her hand.

Her son was _dying_.

Mirreah had declared in front of her and the Scions that she wanted justice, and not death, for her son. She wanted to believe it and place her faith in her Commander, but words were easy to tumble out of the mouth and promises were easy to slip on the tongue. She was old enough and had experienced enough betrayals to know that she couldn’t fully trust anyone. Not her friends, not her colleagues, not her children, and definitely not her former lover.

“No,” she gasped, having not fully recovered from the Force choke. She had already lost one son, and she was going to lose another if she couldn’t get to him fast enough.

Vaylin felt the urgency too, and Senya could see her relish in the fact that her mother couldn’t do anything about it without dealing with her first. “You couldn’t save Thexan, what makes you think you can save Arcann?” she spat.

The flagship lurched and wobbled, and shuttles and anything that wasn’t bolted down careened all over the hangar and into each other. Structural supports rained down from the ceiling. To Senya’s benefit, Vaylin had to fight the falling duracrete and collapsing wall pipes, giving her just enough time to recover and get back up on her feet.

Vaylin hurled rubble at her, and Senya caught them all midair and threw them all at her daughter at once. The Old Gods must’ve been looking out for her, because at that moment, the flagship veered unsuspectingly, causing the rubble to strike her daughter. With her daughter distracted, Senya took the opportunity to fling her into a shuttle, then against a steam pipe and finally, into a far wall.

It broke her heart to have to hurt her daughter, but it comforted her slightly that she could feel Vaylin through the Force, still fiery and very much alive. She ran as fast as she could to the nearest corridor, blocking the entrance with debris so she could buy herself some time and put distance in between her and Vaylin.

She couldn’t afford another confrontation with Vaylin right now. Arcann needed her, and every second wasted decreased his chance of survival. She ran through the mazelike passageways, periodically collapsing the ceiling in places so Vaylin would have to take time to blast her way through the wreckage. For all of the time she bought herself, it still wasn’t enough as she could hear crunching and clanging of rubble being pushed aside behind her.

She didn’t know where to go. Knights were made to memorize the mazelike schematics of various command ships, but they weren’t privy to the schematics of her son’s flagship until they were chosen to serve on it. She let the Force guide her in the right direction, believing that the more nagging it felt meant that the closer she was to the bridge.

Senya sprinted until her lungs burned and she tasted blood in her mouth. She occasionally encountered Knights making their way to the escape shuttles, some of whom were carrying their injured comrades, and she was surprised that they ignored her as she ran past. They were fanatical in serving Arcann, but sense hadn’t been absent for this lot; they knew their fight was lost, and were sensible enough to choose making a speedy escape over fighting a known fugitive. She also encountered the occasional squad of Skytroopers, and she made short work of them by smashing them into walls with the Force. She didn’t have the time to fight them with her lightsaber.

The bridge was just up ahead, but just before she could round the corner, the flagship swayed violently, sending her careening headfirst into a wall. White exploded through her vision and she heard a distant clang of metal hitting the floor. When her vision cleared, she found that a durasteel girder had fallen right where she had been running a split seconds ago. The ship shook again, and Senya took off, ignoring her headache.

The bridge’s entrance had been blocked by collapsed durasteel and duracrete piled up so high that Senya couldn’t see the transparisteel viewport that stretched from floor to ceiling. The amount of rubble she had to move looked daunting, but she had helped Mirreah move the Gravestone out of its mucky resting place so it was definitely doable. Plus, this time she had more of an urgency. Her son’s life depended on her.

With the Force, she grabbed at the wreckage and swept it aside, scattering some of the smaller scraps into the passageway behind her. With her determination, she didn’t even notice the difficulty. Once the blockage was cleared, she was relieved to find that she had clear passage through the rest of the bridge and up the stairs. She sprinted up the steps and was horrified and heartbroken at what she saw.

Arcann was crushed under slabs of duracrete from the chest down. His armour was stained with so much ash that it was more grey than white. Upon closer inspection, there were maroon stains on the fabric from dried blood as well. Her son’s cybernetic arm was broken off slightly above the elbow. The jagged ends of the break meant that the cut wasn’t from Mirreah’s lightsaber but from the falling duracrete. If being buried under duracrete shattered his cybernetic arm which was made from the finest and toughest Zakuulan steel, she didn’t want to think of how the rest of his body fared below the chest.

“No…” she breathed, her voice trailing off. A part of her was scared to assess the extent of the damage closely, but she quashed that fear when she realized through the Force that her son stubbornly clung onto life. She carefully walked over and knelt, cautious of the sparking wires that snaked dangerously around the floor. Her son’s visible eye was closed and the good half of his face was soiled with sweat, ash and dried blood. Brilliant purple bruises had already formed on his scalp, visible through the closely cropped hair. Some of his hair was caked with dried blood from cuts and scratches. She gently cupped the back of his head and lifted it slightly, and she was just about to feel for a pulse on instinct when she remembered that the metal brace went around the entirety of his neck. The faint but laboured rasping coming through the vents of the mask reassured her that her son was still very much alive.

She grabbed a handful of the fabric around his shoulders tightly and slowly hauled him out of the rubble. To her amazement, her son’s body easily slid out of the wreckage, but her breath caught in her throat and she fought back a scream of horror and anguish when she saw the charred slash across his chest. Mirreah’s lightsaber probably cut through a rib or two at the bottom of her son’s ribcage, and from the depth of the wound, she probably had cut into his diaphragm if not his lungs.

Instead of fighting back a scream from horror, Senya now fought back a scream fueled by rage. If Arcann died, she’d return to the Outlander with a murderous vengeance, and for all of Mirreah’s martial prowess, the latter wouldn’t stand a chance against the fury of a mother who’d lost her son.

 _Stay calm_ , Senya told herself. She took several deep breaths and pulled the rest of her son out of the duracrete, relieved to find that the rest of him was intact. She carefully propped him upright to lean on a duracrete slab. Arcann stirred but didn’t wake, and she softly cupped his good cheek and turned his face to hers.

“I wanted to save you,” Senya softly said, heartbroken. Tears blurred her vision, and she felt the familiar lump forming in her throat and her nose getting stuffy from being on the brink of crying. She rapidly blinked away the tears until her vision cleared, not caring that they streamed down her face. Looking closer at the chest wound revealed that there was no blood, which was characteristic of lightsaber injuries, but plasma pooled at the bottom of the rut. A quick inspection of her son informed her that his right arm and left leg looked alright but his right knee was terribly swollen.

 _Probably a shattered knee_ , Senya guessed. If she wasn’t pressed for time, she could’ve made a splint from the rebar scattered about.

The Force grew cold and dark, icy and unforgiving like a harsh night in the dead of winter. Senya looked up, but she didn’t have to, to know that her daughter had finally cornered them. There would be no escape for her and her son, not until she defeated her daughter. That would be more trying that it already was, now that she had Arcann to care for and protect. Somehow she knew that Vaylin wasn’t above using her dying brother as leverage against her.

A despicable thought crossed her mind. Vaylin would kill her brother if the action meant that she could inflict grief on her mother. If they were going to have one final battle on this deteriorating flagship, she’d have to kill her daughter to save her son.

“Too late,” Vaylin taunted, disdain in her voice. “You’re always too late.”

“Vaylin, please,” Senya begged, the lump getting more obstructive in her throat. “What happened to Thexan, Arcann…I should’ve stayed.”

She hated how her voice warbled and how weak and hopeless it made her sound. If she could rewind time and go back two decades, she would’ve chosen to stay, and maybe, just maybe, her children wouldn’t have ended up as they are now, with Thexan dead, Arcann dying, and Vaylin being so hateful and psychotic, and maybe the galaxy wouldn’t be in such a convoluted mess.

Back then, she’d thought that she’d be happy and that she, Valkorion, and their children would have a bright and prosperous future together as a loving family. He had loved her dearly and she had loved him in return, but once their twins were born, the kind, benevolent person she knew started eroding away to reveal something more sinister underneath. She believed in parenting through nurturing and love but he believed in parenting through neglect and fear. No, what he did couldn’t be called parenting. While he never beat the children when she was still with them, he’d get his Knights and Exarchs to beat them while he’d psychologically abuse them. She’d stand up to his subordinates and stop them, and Valkorion had started psychologically abusing her too.

She wanted to deny it, that he’d used her, and that their relationship had been a sham, but seeing him and his subordinates abuse the children woke her up from her naiveté. She’d tried to leave, but her children chose to stay, to prove that they were worthy of the throne, and worthy of their father’s love. She didn’t have the heart to tell them that Valkorion was using them as tools, and that they were fighting a long and losing battle, as the ‘love’ that they chased was always held just out of reach by their father. It was Valkorion’s carrot-and-stick method to keep them in line, and they wised up to it too late.

 _If you leave with them, I’ll have you hunted down_. It was the last thing he’d said to her just before she left in order to scare her to stay in line. She would’ve defied him, as she always had, and take her chances with the children if they’d agree leaving with her. Her former lover was a master manipulator, trying to browbeat her into staying, but she was tired of the abusive games he played.

“You were weak. You left us,” her daughter accused with derision. And then her facial expression softened, and she quietly added, “You left me.”

The sadness in Vaylin’s voice made Senya choke back a sob. It was as if Vaylin admitted to her through her sentiments that she did love her. Once.

But if Vaylin was willing to convey that she did love her mother, then maybe…

Senya eyes widened as it dawned on her that Vaylin and her brothers had barely acknowledged her existence as children because it had been an elaborate ploy between the three of them to hide their love for their mother and show indifference on the surface in order to trick their father into believing that they could reject affection. It hadn’t worked, and the torment they must’ve gone through to hide the fact that they loved their mother for so long to keep up the ruse for years was… she couldn’t bear to think of the emotional toll that must’ve taken on anyone to play such an evil game, especially for a child.

They had chosen to endure the hardship, secretly and silently hoping that their mother could catch on and play along, only that she’d left instead. She’d done everything wrong, but the Lady Scyva gave her the chance of making things right, at least as right as they could be.

“I’m here now,” Senya reassured her quietly, saying each syllable with much effort. She couldn’t say it any louder, not when her throat threatened to close up from fighting the tears.

Vaylin’s Force signature, which had grown softer and gentler from its usual coldness, didn’t change, as if she was contemplating her options of leaving with her mother and injured brother, or casting them aside.

 _Please_ , she silently begged to the Lady Scyva. _Please let her come with us. You’ve given me the opportunity to do better by my family. Please don’t let it all be for nothing._

As soon as she finished her prayer, the Force around her grew colder, darker and more tempestuous than before. The storm had resumed with a renewed fury, powered by bitterness and loathing. All of a sudden, the harsh cold from her daughter’s Force aura now turned into a firestorm, hot and uncontrollable.

And that was when Senya knew she failed. It was as if she’d been thrown into an abyss. She couldn't see, she couldn't hear, and she couldn't breathe.

“I’ll never be what you want,” Vaylin retorted, igniting her lightsaber. Senya felt her heart shatter. Her efforts have all been for nothing, and now everything was worse. Arcann was most likely going to perish, and her daughter, alive and well, had turned her back to her and was never coming back.

She had time to cry and grieve later. She watched as Vaylin sprinted and jumped, and she ignited her own blade to protect her son, tightening her grip on the hilt and readying herself for another deadly battle with her daughter. She heard a pained grunt from behind her, and before she knew it, Vaylin flew backwards towards the entrance of the bridge.

“Why? WHY?” her daughter howled in disbelief.

“Vaylin. There’s hope for you,” Senya begged. She then looked at her son, who had stood up, his good hand gripping his chest. “For both of you.”

She had to try, reach out to her daughter even as their time was running out. “Come with me,” she implored, the unsaid _please_ being a final attempt to reach out to her wayward daughter.

A new bombardment from the Eternal Fleet shook the flagship, setting off a new series of explosions on the bridge. A large durasteel truss collapsed right on her daughter, and the falling duracrete and other twisted metal blocked their only exit.

“Vaylin!” Senya screamed. She desperately scrabbled for her daughter’s presence using the Force and was immensely relieved to find that she was alive and making a rushed escape, and not crushed to death the by truss as she had thought. The bridge shook from another series of explosions, and she noticed movement at the corner of her eyesight. Arcann had fallen onto his knees either from the pain or from losing his balance, and Senya knelt down, looping her arm around his upper back and hoisting up to a standing position as gently as she could.

She hobbled with her son towards the blocked exit. She felt him struggle to breathe, the ragged breaths sounding harsh coming in and out of the filters of the mask. Although she staggered with the added weight, she knew that Arcann was the one trying to keep up. But they couldn’t go any slower. They still had to move the rubble blocking their exit and find their way to a hangar. She recalled the Knights escaping to the hangars when she was making her way to the bridge. There wasn’t even a guarantee that she and her son could find a functioning shuttle even if they made it to the closest hangar before the flagship succumbed.

Senya changed the grip on the fabric of her son’s shoulder, and he grunted in pain. She apologized and changed it to something that was more comfortable for him, but made her grip on him slightly weaker. She lifted her free hand, moving the rubble aside effortlessly with the Force before looping his good arm around her neck. With the exit unobstructed, she stumbled with her son to the cool air of the passageways.

The passageways hadn’t been spared from the effects of the bombardment, but they were relatively undamaged compared to the disaster that was the bridge. The cool air blowing on her face was heavenly and rejuvenating, giving her a little more energy to stumble with her son. Just as she had relied on the Force to lead her to the bridge, she relied on it once more to direct her towards the nearest hangar, praying to Scyva that there would be a functioning shuttle that they could use to escape.

The Force led her through a different set of passageways, since she and Vaylin had destroyed the ones she’d run through on the way here. Occasionally, they’d came across the mangled bodies of defeated Skytroopers and dead Knights.

She tightened her grip on Arcann, and he didn’t make a sound. She glanced at him. He was conscious, but barely. Rivulets of sweat snaked their way down his scalp and the laboured breathing seemed quieter. She felt him slump against her, and fear jolted through her for a second until she heard him wheeze steadily. He was still awake, but was extremely weak, so she dragged him until he had enough energy to bear some of his own weight and limp again.

She had no idea how long they’d walked like this, with her dragging him and him hobbling when he had enough energy. All of the corridors looked the same, although the Force informed her that they were close to their destination – wherever that was. She heard her son exhale and she didn’t hear him take his next breath. She looked at him desperately, recognising unconsciousness. “Arcann. Stay with me. Where is the nearest hangar?” Senya pleaded urgently.

He didn’t answer. Adjusting her hold on him so that she could grip him securely, she Force sprinted, taking care to make the journey as gentle as possible for him. Her surroundings blurred, and she took a split second to glimpse at him. He hadn’t awakened, but she could hear the quieted gasps coming in and out of the mask.

They both arrived at the hangar, and not a second too soon. There were two shuttles left, much to Senya’s relief and delight, and she prayed to Scyva that the closest one was functional. Explosions occurred frequently, and the hangar shook and swayed, making Senya and Arcann careen left and right. Senya Force sprinted again, avoiding the worst of the embers and wreckage that showered down on them. She stumbled in boarding the shuttle, still not used to supporting the full weight of her son.

Once in the shuttle, she strapped Arcann down securely into the seat behind the pilot’s chair, and she slumped down into the pilot’s chair herself. Force sprinting had exhausted her mentally and physically, but they weren’t out of trouble yet. She grit her teeth and pulled up close to the dashboard, slicing into the channel used by the Alliance. _Please work_ …

Had it been an Alliance ship, she wouldn’t have had to slice into the comms. But since this was an enemy shuttle, she had no choice but to use precious time to break into the comms. Beggars couldn’t be choosers.

She half expected it to not work and was pleasantly surprised when she found herself in the middle of a conversation.

“– our way to the Gravestone. We waited for Senya as long as we could,” Lana regretfully relayed to the others.

“I’m alive, but I won’t be joining you,” Senya quietly said. As soon as her words left her mouth, Senya knew she had made a grave mistake. She was escaping with her son in tow, and there was no way that Mirreah would allow them both back on Odessen. And even if she did, there’s no telling what the rest of the Alliance members would do to her son. Especially Koth.

It would’ve been better if she’d just eavesdropped on the open channel and secretly escaped the Alliance and the Eternal Fleet, and having both parties believe that her and her son had both died on the flagship. Mirreah, Lana and the other Force sensitives could sense Force signatures and might not believe it, but her son’s Force aura was weak and virtually undetectable from being so far away and from him lingering so close to death, and she could conceal her own Force signature to make them believe that they’d both perished until they were far away enough in Wild Space…

“What do you mean? Where are you?” Mirreah cut in, concerned.

Senya didn’t have to see Mirreah’s face to know that the worry for her was sincere. But still, she had her son with her, and after going through so much to save him, she wasn’t going to deliver him to his death at the hands of the Alliance.

 _Well you’ve said too much already_ , she mused. _Might as well tell them that you are taking Arcann away to rehabilitate him so that we can be allies and not enemies for the wars to come._

Trust had worn thin in the Alliance, and Senya believed that although she couldn’t fully trust Mirreah with the safety of her son, a part of her felt that if she was to leave the Alliance, it was better she left for an honest reason than for Mirreah to discover later that she’d been lied to. Senya had a gut feeling that they were going to cross paths in the future, and it was better to leave with a better impression than a poor one.

She took a deep breath and exhaled. “I’m in Arcann’s personal shuttle. He’s with me,” she admitted, pressing the buttons on the dashboard to prepare for takeoff.

“Do not betray me, Senya,” Mirreah warned.

If her voice didn’t convince Senya, the subtle shift of the Force made her doubt herself. Mirreah’s Force signature was like a bright light, peaceful, kind, comforting and good, but Senya felt a colder undercurrent underneath the calm exterior. It wasn’t like the coldness associated with Vaylin which was linked with a disregard for humanity, and it wasn’t a feeling of cold akin to brutal winters. It was a vast silence that was unfeeling, taciturn and emotionless.

Senya had always been able to deduce one’s intentions and emotions from reading their Force aura, but here was a Force aura that was a great expanse of nothing but held a promise for darkness. Senya had been so used to Mirreah taking the moral high ground and being rational that sometimes she had forgotten that there had to be darkness for a bright light to shine. She didn’t want to face Mirreah’s nastier side, so she decided to play the soothing relations game. She got up from the pilot’s chair and walked over to her son.

“That was never my intention, but I must do right by my family,” she continued, gently placing a hand on his. He looked up at her, defeated and exhausted, and she looked down in concern. Their gazes met and she held it for a second before stepping towards her chair. She contemplated quickly, wisely choosing the right words to say so that she could prove to Mirreah and the others that Arcann was capable of atonement, and that she was capable of helping him walk the right path. “He saved my life. He can be redeemed. Let me help Arcann become the man he was meant to be.”

The shuttle was now prepared for takeoff, and she pressed a button. The shuttle shuddered to life and inched towards the magnetic shields and towards freedom from the deteriorating flagship.

“No! I won’t let you do this,” Koth protested vehemently. Senya couldn’t care less for what he had to say.

“I’m taking him,” Senya announced, more towards Koth than to the other Alliance members. She cut communications and guided the ship out of the hangar, and eased the shuttle into a gradual acceleration away from the flagship that looked like it might explode at any moment, and far enough from the Eternal Fleet’s turbolaser bombardments.

But she wasn’t the only one accelerating. She felt the same undercurrent in the Force again as Mirreah’s own shuttle caught up to hers. Senya’s grip tightened around the controls so hard that her knuckles were white from the strain. A part of her feared Mirreah and what she was capable of, but her fear for her son quashed the fear for her former Commander.

“She’s in your firing range, Commander. Shoot them down!” Koth commanded. Senya wondered what kind of punishment Mirreah had for him for insubordination. One does not simply give commands to their Commander.

“You’ll kill them both,” Theron warned.

“Senya, what are you doing?” Lana asked, trying to reason with her.

“Saving my son,” she answered confidently. As much as she valued Lana, Mirreah, and Theron’s friendships, her son was of upmost importance to her.

And that was all she cared about right now.

The uneasy coldness filled the distance between their shuttles, growing thicker and more uncomfortable with each passing second as she awaited her fate. Either Mirreah was going to spare them or was going to shoot them down on the spot. She didn’t want to attempt the jump to hyperspace to escape because that would guarantee Mirreah immediately following her into Wild Space and killing her and her son once they jumped out of hyperspace.

The tension got so thick that Senya had to fight squirming on the edge of her seat, but the coldness was abruptly replaced by Mirreah’s regular Force signature, and she knew that Mirreah had chosen to be kind.

“I won’t shoot an unarmed ship. Arcann’s no longer a threat,” Mirreah declared to her crew. Her voice softened, and she added, “I’m trusting you, Senya.”

She had to admire Mirreah, that she was willing to trust someone who didn’t trust her. And Mirreah knew it, too, and she chose to take the gamble anyways. Senya knew that there was no guarantee that her son wouldn’t cause Mirreah trouble down the future or even cripple the Alliance.

She might not be able to dictate what Arcann’s choices are for the future, but she would do her damn best to make sure he didn’t fall back onto the same dark path that he had walked for years.

“Thank you, Commander. Your mercy will be remembered,” Senya answered gratefully, pulling a lever to jump into hyperspace. She pressed a few more buttons to cut communications and to activate the cloaking device for their shuttle. She minimized her Force aura as much as she could and walked over to check on her son. She knelt down to caress his cheek.

“I’m sorry,” he rasped to her before passing out again.

“It’s alright, son,” she replied softly, her voice cracking. _You can cry later. You have more work to do_ , the pragmatic voice inside her head reminded her.

She walked back up to the pilot’s chair and sat down. She scrambled the comms so that the Alliance and the Eternal Empire’s technicians would have a difficult time slicing in and programmed the hyperspace route the shuttle will take through Wild Space.

Venturing into the Core Worlds or even the Outer Rim were not options – too many patrol ships. She had to go far into Wild Space, far from the border worlds of the Eternal Empire. She had patrolled on some of these worlds, and there had been rumours of other planets and their locations past their Empire’s borders, but she wasn’t exactly sure where they were, and if they were developed well enough to be able to offer extensive medical care for her son.

There were plenty of other factors to consider. She had to stay away from all major space ports, shadowports, and patrol ships. She’d seen the vast network Lana had and what information she’d been privy too, and information on them being seen by a patrol or landing on any port will eventually get back to her. In addition, she had to stay away from known Eternal Fleet patrol areas. The Fleet patrolled areas of Wild Space and known hyperspace lanes, and she had to count on luck to avoid running into a patrol unit.

There was one place she could try. Biting her lip, Senya pressed the coordinates for travel.

With their destination figured out, Senya turned her full attention to her son. He was still out cold, the good side of his face slick with sweat, and she could feel his suffering radiating out of him. She debated whether or not to unstrap him from the seat and transfer him to a bed in the sleeping quarters, but she decided against it for fear of exacerbating his injuries. She could, however, pull the lever beside the seat to help him recline so she could better treat him.

Once the chair was fully reclined, Senya took the time to better evaluate her son’s wounds. His lightsaber wound was blackened on the edges, but in places where the carbonized flesh had come off, the flesh was red and plasma pooled in the ridges. The Force bubbled within her with the urge to heal, and she gingerly hovered her hands above the charred flesh and allowed it to flow from her to him. She imagined it mending broken bones, repairing internal organs and knitting torn flesh back together. She closed her eyes and concentrated until she felt the Force fizzle out.

She opened her eyes and looked at him. He was still unconscious and she still felt his pain, and his chest wound was still red and inflamed, but it looked better than it did several minutes ago. Senya headed to the refresher, praying that the medicine cabinet had a fully stocked medpac, and a lot of kolto patches. Were pain pills and anti-inflammatory pills too much to wish for as well?

All shuttles and ships belonging to the Eternal Empire must carry medpacs by law, but she didn’t know if they’ve been used and if so, if they’ve been replenished. She swung the medicine cabinet door open, and a red and silver box caught her attention. She breathed a sigh of relief, almost giddy with gratefulness to the Lady Scyva. Sitting on the middle shelf was an unused medpac, and the top and bottom shelves was stuffed full with kolto patches in their unopened packaging. There were two generic anti-inflammatory pill bottles sitting in the upper left corner of the cabinet, their seals intact.

Senya used the Force to carry all of the supplies to her son at once, depositing them in a heap at the side of his chair. She opened the medpac and felt like a pauper who’d just won the lottery. There was a pair of scissors, a roll of medical tape, a medisensor, some more pills, antiseptic patches, gauze pads and bandages, more kolto patches, and a pair of medical-grade rubber gloves. All unopened. There were stim-shots, but Senya dared not use those. She knew what they contained based on the descriptions, but she didn’t know how to use them to stabilize her son.

To her disappointment, there were no bone stabilizers for her son’s legs. At the bottom of the medpac were two cold compresses, but they hadn’t been frozen. Senya took those two and stuffed them into the back of the freezer in the shuttle’s kitchenette before returning to her son.

She placed the pill bottles aside for Arcann to take when he woke up. She peeled off her Knight’s gloves and replaced them with the medical pair. With the pair of scissors she found earlier, she slowly cut away at the charred fabric around the wound until she saw a sizeable patch of healthy skin. The process was long and arduous; the hardened armour on her son’s chest was almost too much for the medpac’s scissors to handle, and she took great care not to accidentally poke the gash or cut healthy skin.

She picked up a package containing antiseptic patches. _I hope these aren’t alcohol-based_. She tore open the packaging and sniffed at the contents suspiciously, immediately relieved to know that they didn’t have the characteristic scent of alcohol. She carefully dabbed them in and around her son’s wound, occasionally checking his status with the medisensor.

Once the gash was disinfected, Senya opened the kolto patches and placed them side-by-side until they covered the entirety of the wound, holding them together and in place with medical tape. She wrapped the gash up with the gauze bandages, gently lifting Arcann up with the Force whenever she had to wind the bandage around his back. She tried to wrap the bandage around him as lightly as she could so that he wouldn’t have trouble breathing.

The medisensor indicated that her son was slightly better, and she went to treat his other injuries. She mended his broken ribs, his knee, the leg fractures and the various cuts and bruises with the Force. She stepped into the refresher, grabbing one of the towels and wetting it under the sink. She used the wet towel to wipe off the sweat, dirt and dried blood off of her son’s face and scalp. Then Senya had an idea. She stepped back into the refresher, taking the other towel and retrieving the semi-frozen cold compresses from the freezer.

She had repaired his shattered knee but the swelling needed time to subside. She wrapped the clean towel around his knee, placed the cold compresses on both sides of the joint and secured them in place with the used towel and medical tape.

Senya stood up to observe her handiwork. Arcann was asleep, but the medisensor showed that although his status was a large improvement from before, his condition was nowhere close to stabilized. Her son needed a hospital.

Senya walked to the refresher and discarded the gloves. She washed her hands and splashed water onto her face to wash away the sweat and grime from the day’s battles. She looked up to the mirror, water dripping from the bottom of her chin.

She almost didn’t recognize the person staring back. She looked a decade older, with black rings around her eyes and more pronounced wrinkles around the corners of her eyes and mouth. She had bruises on her forehead, and her eyes widened at the bruises on her neck. Her eyes, which had always been a clear sky blue, looked weary, as if they’d seen too much in this life.

The observation wasn’t wrong. She _had_ seen too much in this life.

The lump started forming again in her throat. With no more towels to dry her face and the tears that started budding from the corners of her eyes, Senya rubbed her face into the crook of her elbow before heading back out to sit in the captain’s chair.

They still had hours to go before they reached their destination, and Senya wasn’t even sure the place existed. What if it didn’t? Were they both doomed to aimlessly wander Wild Space until they ran out of supplies?

The hopelessness of the situation finally crashed into Senya as if she was back in the bridge and was being buried under rubble in Arcann’s place. Her son was dying, and they were headed to a place whose existence was only a rumour. And even if it existed, did it have a hospital that could treat him? What if the doctors refused treatment? Even if they did treat him, how was she going to pay for it? How were they both going to evade both the Alliance and her daughter?

She wasn’t even sure if her daughter was alive. The last time she sensed Vaylin’s presence was at the start of her daughter’s escape from the bridge, but she’d been so focused on getting her son to a shuttle that she didn’t try reaching out to her with the Force again. And she wasn’t going to attempt it now. She didn’t want to know her daughter’s fate, and if Vaylin survived, she didn’t want Vaylin to find out where they were through the Force. And even if Vaylin was alive, her daughter didn’t want her. In the past, Vaylin shunned her as part of a ruse but now her contempt and disgust were sincere.

She had already lost one son, was probably going to lose another, and in a way, had lost her daughter.

Exhausted and overcome with sorrow, Senya buried her face into her hands and finally let herself cry.

               


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Senya races against time to get Arcann the medical attention he desperately needs.

A gentle beeping jolted Senya awake. Panicking, she sat up so quickly that the sudden lack of blood flowing to her brain nearly made her black out. She squeezed her eyes shut, waiting out the vertigo and for her vision to clear up. When her body re-established its equilibrium, she rubbed her eyes, clearing up the gritty buildup that had accumulated when she’d cried herself to sleep.

She was in a dimly-lit shuttle, and the transparisteel of the viewport was blacked over, a telling sign that she was currently in hyperspace. The floodgates in her memory opened, and the day’s events came rushing out in torrents: fighting Vaylin, rescuing Arcann, Mirreah pardoning them, jumping into hyperspace, treating Arcann…

Grabbing the medisensor from the dashboard, Senya leapt out of her seat and ran to Arcann so quickly that she nearly tripped over her own feet. Her son was still strapped down into his seat and was fast asleep; his breathing had evened out, but his breaths were still ragged and clearly audible through the vents of the mask. A hasty once-over with the medisensor informed her that Arcann’s multiple fractures and shattered knee had now healed, although the swelling around his knee still needed time to subside. He was exhausted and dehydrated, but Senya already knew that.

She investigated Arcann’s chest. With all of the gauze and medical tape in place, it was tricky to gauge how much the kolto patches had helped with the healing process. The medisensor showed that Arcann’s chest wound hadn’t improved, but at least it hadn’t worsened.

She studied the pill bottles next to her, hurriedly skimmed through the descriptions. _I’ll have him take a painkiller when he wakes up_ , she decided. _I’ll probably have him take an anti-inflammatory too_. But she was no pharmacist, and had absolutely no clue whether or not taking the two together would cause adverse side effects.

The beeping on the dashboard hadn’t subsided while she was performing the checkup. Senya rushed back to the dashboard, and the navicomp told her that they were dropping out of hyperspace in half an hour.

How long had she been asleep? Even after her nap, she still felt drained, and doing simple arithmetic in her head felt like doing mathematical acrobatics instead. Her proposed route deep into Wild Space was supposed to take several hours, and after the jump into hyperspace, she’d treated Arcann’s wounds, and although she hadn’t kept track of the time, she estimated that it took her slightly more than an hour, and probably an hour and a half at most. She’d fallen asleep soon afterwards in the pilot’s chair. Senya summed up the numbers and figured out that she’d been asleep for nearly three hours.

Her body appreciated the much-needed rest, but those three hours could’ve been wisely spent elsewhere, such as planning. There were so many things that they desperately needed. Even after she got Arcann treated at the hospital they’re headed to, they’d still be fugitives hunted by both the Alliance and the Eternal Empire. They’d have to spend their time drifting through Wild Space to avoid the Fleet and Mirreah’s patrols, but she and Arcann couldn’t float through space forever. Eventually, they’d have to stop somewhere to purchase food, fuel and medical supplies. The medpac was a fantastic find, but all of the kolto patches, the antiseptic wipes, and almost all of the gauze had been used to treat her son. Bandages and kolto patches needed to be changed regularly.

Senya walked to the refresher and rummaged through all of the drawers underneath the sink. Nothing. She visited the kitchenette next and opened up all of the cabinets and drawers. She hoped that a kitchenette would have another medpac, knowing how easily accidents occurred in kitchens during food preparation, but again, it was another fruitless search.

There was no medpac, but the pantry was stocked with non-perishables and military-issued packaged meals. She sighed in relief that there was food on hand, but frowned when she took stock of how much they had. Even if she rationed them out between her and Arcann, they’d need to stop somewhere to restock within a week.

There could still be necessities stored in the sleeping quarters. Senya combed through all of the closets, drawers, and to be thorough, underneath the blankets and mattresses of the bunks. Again, she was let down; there was no medpac, and definitely no food. _Scyva forbid, but if I really have to, I can cut the towels and bedsheets into strips to make bandages,_ she told herself, but she prayed she didn’t have to resort to that.

She returned to the pilot’s chair and pressed a button on the dashboard, and the holo of the galactic map illuminated the dimmed insides of the shuttle. Where else could they go? They were still within the outer territories of the Eternal Empire, and beyond that were the vast unknown and uncharted areas of the galaxy.

The beeping started up again, telling Senya that they were dropping out of hyperspace. The opacity of the transparisteel was replaced with clearness, and for a split second, streaks of white amongst the dark expanse of space decorated the viewport.

Senya surveyed the stretch of space in front of her. There were gentle wisps of blue and purple nebulae caressing the blackness of space like shimmersilk scarves, and beyond that, the glittering of stars from a distant arm of the galaxy. But the space immediately in front of her shuttle was too dark, and _way too empty_.

There was no sun.

There was no planet.

_There wasn’t going to be a hospital._

Senya’s jaw dropped. She couldn’t do anything but stupidly gape at the viewport as her brain processed the horrible reality of what this meant for her son. She screamed, her lungs pushing air through her windpipe, but nothing came out except for a strangled cry. She took a deep breath and tried screaming again, and this time, she could only emit a scratchy noise from her throat.

There wasn’t going to be a hospital, and she didn’t know where else to go.

Senya still stared out into the emptiness, silent and open-mouthed. She was screaming inside; her vocal cords might’ve forgotten how to function, but if she could scream, she would until she ruined them. She longed to, no, needed to hit, punch or kick something, but her arms and legs lost their function as well and she stood in front of the dashboard, rooted in place.

The shuttle shuddered, and anything that wasn’t bolted down started hovering in the air as Senya’s distress manifested itself through the Force. A warning light flashed, illuminating the dimness inside the shuttle with pulses of red.

 _Stay calm and get a grip_ , she told herself repeatedly, but the rattling continued. Her training as a Knight required some mastery of managing her emotions, but anguish of this calibre wasn’t easily controlled or ignored.

 _Breathe in, breathe out. Breathe in, breathe out_ , she instructed, forcing her lungs to work in tandem with her mental commands. The tremors dwindled and floating objects dropped back down, landing onto the floor with dull thuds.  

A pained groan behind her demanded her attention. Her outburst of raw hopelessness roused Arcann from his slumber. He groaned again, struggling against the seatbelt securing him to the seat. She rushed over to him, her distress at their predicament momentarily forgotten. “Water. Please,” he gasped, his good hand reaching up to his face.

Senya promptly filled a glass from the kitchenette. By the time she returned to Arcann’s side, he’d removed his mask, surprising her. She’d always thought that he needed it to help him breathe after being severely injured on Korriban, but apparently not.

But even the simple act of unmasking himself drained him of his strength and left him wheezing. She waited until his breathing stabilized before gently pulling the lever next to the seat, angling the backrest so that Arcann was reclined enough to not aggravate his wounds, but upright enough to drink without choking on or spilling the contents. She gingerly held the glass to his mouth, tilting it as he swallowed the water thirstily.

“Arcann,” Senya softly said, catching her son’s attention. “I found painkillers. Do you want to take one now?”

He weakly nodded. Senya placed the glass next to her on the floor. She fiddled with the safety seal of the bottle before fishing out a pill and delicately placing it into Arcann’s mouth. She fetched the glass beside her and helped her son drain the rest of the glass. “Do you want more water?”

Arcann shook his head. His pained expression told her that there was something else he wanted, but didn’t have the strength to ask, leaving Senya with a guessing game to play.

“Are you hungry?” she asked gently. Her son shook his head. He might not have the energy to speak in his weakened state but slight nods and shakes of his head for _yes_ and _no_ were still thankfully within his ability.

“Do you want me to help you put your mask back on?”

He shook his head, which surprised her. If he didn’t need the mask to survive, why’d he put up with wearing it for years? It must’ve been constricting, to say the least. She always thought he needed it to breathe, to enhance the vision of his injured eye, or to shield burnt skin. But if the mask wasn’t necessary for survival, did he choose to wear it for an aesthetic reason? Even after the healers had tirelessly worked to repair charred skin and restore sight to his damaged eye, a spiderweb of scars still marred his face. She wondered if he was too ashamed of his scars to show that half of his face to the masses.

But even with a face half full of scars, Senya still thought her son looked handsome. To her, the mask was hideous and made him look more machine than man, and she was sure many of his subordinates also thought so whilst serving under him, although no one dared to admit it in fear of incurring his wrath.

“Do you want me to let you sleep?”

He nodded feebly. “I want to sleep on a bed,” he wheezed out, eyes pleading.

Senya cautiously wound her arm around Arcann’s back and slowly helped him stand, shifting most of his weight onto her. He slumped over, unable to stand upright, and they sluggishly hobbled their way towards the sleeping quarters.

With the Force, Senya pushed away the blanket covering the cot and gradually lowered her son down onto the mattress. Once her son was lying down on his back, she lifted his legs up from the floor to place them onto the cot. She reached for the blanket she’d tossed aside earlier, pulling it up to cover his neck and shoulders before moving to the other end of the bed to ensure his boots were also covered by the blanket.

It was a bittersweet moment, tucking her son into bed. She couldn’t remember the last time she did so, but it’d surely been before the time her children started scorning her. Still, she savoured the moment, as it was a reminder of happier and simpler times when her children were just children, unbound and unburdened by the duty required of them as heirs of the throne. It was also a reminder of a time when she was a better mother; that woman was someone Senya now aspired to being to mend the estranged relationship between her and Arcann.

Words to the lullabies eluded her from the passage of time, but time didn’t dull her memory of the tunes themselves, so she softly hummed the soothing melodies of one lullaby after another until she heard Arcann’s breathing quieten as he settled into a deeper sleep.

She took a moment to examine her son’s face. It’d been more than five years since she’d last seen Arcann without the mask, and even so, it’d been from officially broadcasted holos. Even with the deep scars and the tortured breathing, her son still looked a decade younger when asleep. Instead of a grown man who’d aged more than his actual years due to grief, war, and from pressures of the throne, here he looked no more than nineteen. She brushed the back of her knuckles gently over the scars on his cheek, feeling the deep ridges and ruts permanently etched into his skin.

As much as she wanted to remain by his side and watch him sleep for the first time in over two decades, she couldn’t. There more other important matters that required her attention, so Senya gently kissed her son’s forehead and returned to the dashboard.

Where could they go? They could no longer risk jumping through Wild Space in search of rumoured planets and shadowports; she’d gambled and lost, the proof of it silently mocking her through the viewport.

For the Alliance and for Vaylin to start tracking her, they’d have to plot several courses from Odessen and guess where she’d leave hyperspace to make course corrections. That was a timely endeavor with no guarantee of success, giving Senya the advantage, but the longer she floated around in this empty stretch of space, the more time they had to uncover her location.

The only certainty of finding a hospital now was to head back into known galactic space. If she wanted a good hospital, she needed to go somewhere populated, infiltrating a place teeming with Knights, Exarchs, Zakuulan spies and Mirreah’s own agents and risk being exposed. It would be a daunting task to pull off, but it wasn’t impossible; although she and Arcann traveled in a Zakuulan shuttle, the entire galaxy was still under the iron grip of the Eternal Empire, so Zakuulan shuttles wouldn’t look out of place.

But she was painfully short on allies. The Scions hadn’t contacted her after Heskal’s death and had retreated into obscurity. She couldn’t blame them; Heskal’s fanatical attempt at fulfilling a prophecy further depleted their ranks. She hadn’t attempted to reach out to them either, for both their safety and hers, and now, she wasn’t even sure if there was another Scion stepping up as the de-facto leader of the group or if they’d fractured into smaller groups and scattered themselves across the galaxy.

She’d heard rumours of Knights who’d defected and banded together into various group throughout the galaxy to fight against the Eternal Empire, and she’d also heard from the galactic grapevine that some of her former colleagues had rejected Arcann and Vaylin’s lunacy and joined these groups. But these were, once again, rumours.

Were these Knights actually fighting against Vaylin? How could she be certain that their allegiances couldn’t be bought and traded with the mountain of credits and aurodium ingots that Vaylin promised to those who turned them in? _No_ , she decided, _I can’t risk exposing myself or Arcann, especially to a group of Knights_.

There were other individuals she’d helped over the years: Zakuulan refugees fleeing Arcann’s tyranny, Knights whose lives she’d saved while on duty, a handful of Scions she’d crossed paths with during the purge, to name a few. She’d only kept sparse contact with a handful of these. But out of these few, who was still alive?

And which ones weren’t affiliated with the Alliance? She’d divulged some of her past contacts with the Alliance to aid its campaign against Arcann, but she hadn’t shared all of them. She was entitled to her secrets. Of course, she could reach out to those contacts she had in the Old World. Their trustworthiness was questionable at best, but at the same time, they were most connected to the various resistance movements on Zakuul and offworld.

There was Paralas Fyaar, a friend of an acquaintance of Reg who went by the nickname Ral. The last time she heard, Ral was involved with smuggling contraband in and out of Zakuul. Perhaps she knew a doctor, medic, nurse or somebody in healthcare who was sympathetic to their cause?

Senya pressed a button on the dashboard, opening a secure channel. All she could do now was wait out the silence. A minute later, she heard soft static from a comlink connecting on the other end. “Who’s this?” a male voice mumbled.

Senya froze. Why was a man answering Ral’s comlink?

She gathered her wits about her and took a deep breath before exhaling. “Is Ral here? May I speak with her?” she questioned a little bit too cheerily for her taste.

There was a pause, as if the man on other end needed a moment to carefully consider his reply. “No, she’s not. Who’s this?” the man asked gruffly.

Senya ignored his question, countering with one of her own. “When will she be available?”

The comlink went silent.

Senya lifted her finger off the button, instantly closing the channel. Who did she just talk to?

If Ral wasn’t answering a secure channel of her own making, then where was she? Senya hoped that Ral had just left the room or it was a friend who’d answered in her place. She refused to consider the alternative.

Who else could she contact, if not Ral?

There was also Lerak Velos, involved with spiriting Zakuulans offworld. He’d been the busiest during the Scion massacre and the twilight years of Arcann’s rule, but with Vaylin ascending the throne, it was guaranteed that he’d become busy. Extremely busy.

She’d assisted him in shepherding Zakuulan exiles offworld while acting as the muscle for the group, and she’d saved his life twice after he’d gotten himself into two separate incidents in Breaktown. He’d since greatly improved in conducting his... clandestine activities. And due to his two near-death experiences, he told her to call him Trouble as his moniker and that he owed her an enormous favour that she could call in anytime. 

Senya opened up another secure channel, hoping that Lerak still used the same frequency he’d used when they were last in contact. Unwise on his end, yes, but it was her only method of reaching him.

The crackling on the other side of the channel was almost instant. “Hello?”

“I’m looking for Trouble,” Senya asked, equal parts polite and wary. She hadn’t talked to Lerak in more than two years so her memory of his voice was fuzzy, but the voice at the other end sounded deeper than what she remembered as Lerak’s.

Instead of a reply, she was rewarded with shuffling noises and muted murmurs, and then sudden silence. Senya sighed in defeat. Either her resistance contacts had changed their comlink frequencies or their comlinks were now owned by someone else. Izax forbid that it was a Knight or some Zakuulan intelligence agent trying to glean information about her through the comlinks.

She was just about to shut off the channel when she heard some annoyed muttering. There was some rustling on the other end, as if the comlink was jostled around from one person to another. “Who’s this?”

“I hope this is a secure channel, Trouble,” Senya started. “Who was that?”

“Ah, it’s my favourite enforcer,” Lerak greeted, his voice a whisper. “Yes, that was a colleague, and yes, it’s secure.”

“Remember Breaktown? You owe me, and I’m calling it in,” Senya told him.

She heard an exasperated sigh on the other end. She needed a huge favour, and Lerak knew it. “I haven’t forgotten. What do you want?” he finally asked.

“I need a good hospital that’s off the grid. Do you know any?”

“Those are two mutually exclusive things.”

“No they’re not! Don’t give me that!” Senya snapped.

“Let me guess: you want someone to do something off the books then, and you want doctors that won’t tattle to their superiors,” he summarized. “Who’s this for?”

“It’s for my _friend_ , and he fights for _us_ ,” Senya emphasized. “He’s badly injured.”

 _And we can’t come back to Zakuul_. She didn’t say that, but there were some pieces of the puzzle that didn’t take much thought for others to place together.

“Try Commenor in the Ranchuk sector. The University of Commenor has a medical school and an affiliated hospital,” Lerak advised.  “Yes, it’s part of the Republic, but the hospital is top notch, and depending on what you need, doctors will look the other way.”

Senya pulled out the holo of the galactic map. Commenor sounded like the exact place they needed, but it was too far from where she was, and was a major trading outpost. Eternal Empire forces would be watching over the planet like a hawk and fastidiously documenting the spacecraft entering and exiting the planet as well as its orbital spaceport.

Even if they could get past the patrols, it also sounded too good to be true. Surely Vaylin and the Alliance kept a watchful eye over the planet and its renowned hospital. “Do you know any other places?”

“The galaxy has many hospitals. You have to give me a location to work with,” Lerak pressed.

“I don’t even know where I am,” Senya confessed. “Do you know any other places, preferably those that are far from major hyperspace lanes?”

“Try Garqi in the Cassander sector. It’s an agri-world on a hyperspace lane, but it’s a smaller lane, so it’s much less traveled. There’s Pesktda Municipal, the capital city’s main hospital. I can’t guarantee that their doctors will help your friend off the record and stay quiet,” Lerak apologetically said. “But it’s far from Zakuul.”

 _It’s also far from us. We’ll run out of supplies before we can get there_.

It was time for a different approach. “Do you know any doctors, nurses, surgeons that you’ve gotten offworld?”

“You’ll have to let me think. I’ll get back to you shortly,” Lerak hastily promised before cutting the connection.

Senya took a deep breath and held it, before letting out a long, slow exhale. Traveling to Garqi would take her more than two weeks if she included the pit stop to replenish supplies. Commenor was closer, but the trip would take nine days. She’d rather risk the heavy patrols and go to Commenor and get Arcann healed off the record than head to Garqi. Regardless of her choice, she and Arcann needed to make a pit stop somewhere.

A light flashing on the dashboard told her that she had an incoming call from Lerak. Senya held her breath, opening a secure channel.

“Someone came for help,” Lerak explained curtly. “As for your doctor, I only know one. Samir Durrun’s on Carratos in the O’pahz system. She works at a hospital in Chofin, the capital city. Don’t know what kind of doctor she is, though. I’ll call her and ask her for her contact frequency and I’ll get back to you.”

Lerak was efficient, and Senya received Samir’s contact information without having to wait long. But Carratos was too far away. And just like Coruscant, it was an ecumenopolis, which was teeming with Eternal Empire, Republic, and Alliance forces. She and Arcann could disappear and hide in a crowd of people, it was exponentially riskier than visiting Commenor.

There was also an Alliance presence on Commenor; the Alliance secretly shipped medical supplies to the university and its hospitals periodically to fight the Eternal Empire’s economic sanctions. If she went there, surely somebody from Theron or Lana’s network would notice her even if the doctors didn’t talk. There was a Zakuulan presence there as well, but that could work to her advantage. Nobody was going to notice a Zakuulan shuttle dropping somebody off to the emergency room. She’ll just be another Knight bringing in an injured comrade.

And with all of the Alliance’s victories against the Eternal Throne, Knights were getting injured left, right and centre from reprisals and home-grown rebellions.

As long as she can get to the emergency room and get Arcann in and out of surgery without revealing their identities, they’d have time to escape elsewhere even if somebody informed the Alliance or Vaylin. Their fastest ships would still take days to reach Commenor.

 _We’ll go to Commenor_ , Senya decided. But first, she needed to purchase supplies and refuel at a spaceport. She looked at the planets and their trade routes, weighing the advantages and disadvantages of each.

Bakura was the closest, being only three days away. She could quickly refuel and stock up at their orbital spaceport, but the Eternal Empire presence there was heavy. The planet was a major player in the manufacturing, mining, and agricultural industries, and it was situated on the Shiritoku Way. Thus it was of stupendous importance and was one of the first worlds conquered by the Eternal Empire.

Firrerre was near Bakura, also being a three-day journey, and it didn’t lie on a major trade route. It wasn’t of high strategic importance compared to Bakura, hence the Eternal Empire presence should be smaller. There was a spaceport located near the capital, but it was planetside, requiring her to land.

Riflor was a slightly farther journey. There was also an orbital spaceport above Riflor, but like Bakura, it was of strategic importance due to its exports of fuel and refined ores, and Eternal Empire forces were expected to be garrisoned there.

 _I’ll try my luck with Firrerre_ , then, Senya decided, entering the coordinates into the navicomp.

 

* * *

 

_Firrerre_

_Firrerre System, Zuma Sector, Sugai Subsector_

_~3 days after the Battle of Odessen_

 

Senya expected to be fired on by the Eternal Fleet upon exiting hyperspace. Her shuttle was shielded, and she kept her Force aura suppressed to be as unnoticeable as possible.

In front of her, Firrerre looked like a blue marble in space, the white swirls from the clouds complementing the blue. It was a terrestrial world covered with mountain ranges and many waterfalls. It also had large oceans, much like Zakuul. Unfortunately, the dark, jagged shapes of the Eternal Fleet darkened the area of space surrounding the world.

Senya headed to the refresher. She splashed water onto her face, a poor attempt to make herself look more awake. She hadn’t slept much in the last few days, her worry for Arcann’s health and of Vaylin and Mirreah’s patrols allowing her to only drift off into a fitful slumber at best. She also had recurring nightmares of Arcann perishing in front of her eyes, and Vaylin Force choking her and laughing while she suffocated; both of which had her abruptly sitting up in bed from the shock, body slick with sweat and her heart pounding like a drum with the adrenaline coursing through her veins.

Unlike his mother, Arcann spent the most of the trip asleep, but the medisensor didn’t show any improvement in his condition. The kolto patches and bandages had come off, and she’d gotten him out of his ruined armour so that the wound was better ventilated and easier to clean.

Senya had spent most of her time tending to her son. His body wasn’t taking to any more Force healing, and he had a weak appetite as well; she’d fed him simple soups and stews, and it worried her that her son wasn’t eating much. He needed to eat to regain his strength.

She unshielded the shuttle as she neared the orbital spaceport. Her heart sank when she noticed the coloured specks of foreign spacecraft docked at the spaceport hovering above the capital city and Firrerreo shuttles traveling to and from the capital. It meant that the orbital spaceport was for parking only, and any restocking purchases must be done on the surface. Visitors were forbidden from entering the planet’s atmosphere directly, and those visitors were required to dock at the orbital spaceport and be escorted to the surface by Firrerreo officials.

Senya cursed under her breath. There was no way in any existing hell that she’d leave Arcann behind in a strange place while she went on a shopping trip, but as the pilot of a Zakuulan shuttle, she could use her appearance as a Knight to pull some strings. She steered the shuttle towards the capital. Traffic control was quick to notice that she veered off from the spaceport, and she immediately received an incoming call from air traffic control. Senya pressed a button and opened the communications channel.

“Visitors are required to dock at the orbital spaceport,” the voice on the other end reminded her snobbishly.

“This is Shula Myec of the Knights of Zakuul, and I _will_ land at your planetside spaceport,” Senya commanded, trying her best to keep the nervous warble out of her voice. To put the icing on the cake, she added, “Need I remind you what happens if you defy the Knights of Zakuul?”

Using fear as a tactic to get what she wanted was despicable and dishonourable, but it could be very effective. She needed it to be very effective right now.

“You’re cleared for docking,” the voice on the other end hastily conceded. “Head to the south landing pad, number eight-two-six.”

Senya grinned at her success for the entire descent towards the landing site, but her heart sank as the shuttle closed in to her designated landing spot. Knights were patrolling the marketplace near the landing pad, and with the bounty Vaylin had placed on her head, it warranted that this lot would be on the lookout for her. And since she escaped Odessen with nothing but the clothes on her back, she had nothing to disguise herself with. She wished she still had her helm with her, but she’d left that to collect dust back in her quarters on Odessen.

There were some minimal adjustments she could make to alter her appearance. She’d be laughed at for her stupidity if she got caught, but a laughable attempt was far better than just strutting off the shuttle the way she looked right now. She let down her hair, combing through it to tease out the knots before parting her hair over to one side, the fringe partially covering her left eye. The wanted holos showed her looking stern with her hair tied up in its bun, and although letting down her hair wasn’t much of a disguise, it was better than nothing.

The holos also showed her with her pristine white armour. She took off her breastplate and gauntlets and placed them into a storage area at the back of the shuttle hidden by an automatic sliding door. She still looked like a Knight, but at least most of her signature white armour was off. The black shirt she wore underneath her breastplate and the greaves were standard issue, so she should have no difficulty looking like any other Knight out of armour when off duty.

She walked quietly to the sleeping quarters to Arcann, who weakly turned to face her. “I’m going to get some supplies and will be back soon,” she told him, planting a gentle kiss on his forehead. He groaned something that sounded like okay in response. She placed her old emergency beacon into his hands. “Activate this if there’s any trouble.”

She knew that she’d have to leave Arcann whenever they’d have to resupply at spaceports, and she didn’t have a loyal droid keeping an eye on her son or the shuttle during her absences. During the journey to Firrerre, she’d spent her time carefully reprogramming her emergency beacon so that activating it would forward the distress signal to her wrist link instead and not the other Alliance members as originally intended. It wasn’t much, but Izax forbid, if something happened to Arcann while she was gone, at least she’d know instantly so she could do something about it.

Arcann drifted back off into sleep, and Senya glanced back sadly at his still form before leaving the shuttle.

Refueling droids sprung into action the moment she stepped out. Senya stalked to the marketplace and a brief glance at the vendors and wares informed her that despite Firrerre’s proximity to the much-traveled Shiritoku Way, the marketplace catering to visitors was lacking. She’d heard tales from former colleagues that the Firrerreo were a self-reliant people and were virulently race-centric to their own people, uncaring for others. The clans couldn’t give half a care for the wellbeing of other clans; they didn’t even band together as people to fight the conquest of their own planet. Even though it stimulated the local economy, they were so isolationist that after the conquest, it still showed in the size of the spaceport marketplace and the available goods on sale.

She _should_ be alright even with the limited selection as she only wanted the basics. Food and kolto patches and bandages were ubiquitous. Senya’s mood darkened when she remembered that the Eternal Empire’s sanctions and periodically withholding foodstuffs from the locals made even the bare basics expensive.

She made a point to avoid the Knights’ paths and be subtle about it, and to walk casually so that she didn’t look like she was in a nervous rush. She located a nearby pharmacy close to the markets and made a beeline there. She received a cold reception when she stepped into the pharmacy, not that she mattered as she wasn’t in a talking mood either. While she eyed their wares, the pharmacist and other staff eyed her apprehensively in return. There were gauze pads, antiseptic wipes, bandages, medical tape and pill bottles of all sorts. There were kolto patches too, but with the Eternal Empire controlling the kolto supply on Manaan, kolto patches were fixed at an exorbitant price.

But it was still something she could afford. After the raid on the Gilded Star, the Alliance had a little more available spending money allotted to each member, even after using the funds to buy supplies that were secretly smuggled to impoverished planets underneath the Eternal Empire’s nose. Also, she and Arcann hadn’t eaten through their provisions as quickly as she thought, so she’d more leeway with regards to her budget for medical supplies.

With the whole lot watching her with more interest now, she cleared the shelves of the kolto patches, antiseptic wipes, gauze pads as well as the bandages and placed them into her pack. She threw in another bottle of painkillers and a roll of medical tape for good measure before placing her pack on the counter. The pharmacist eyed her suspiciously while the others raised an eyebrow after eyeing her from top to bottom. Senya returned the cool stare, unfazed. But money talks, so she let the credits she piled on top of the counter work its magic on her behalf.

With the medical supplies problem solved, she returned to the shuttle, messily depositing the pile on the bunk adjacent to Arcann’s before heading back out to the marketplace. She feared going back outside and having to predict the Knights’ movements and dodge them. But with food being vital to travelers, she didn’t need to stray far from the shuttle to find a vendor who sold non-perishables.

She didn’t spend a long time at that vendor either. He looked at her with a calculating gaze, setting off all sorts of alarm bells inside her head, and she wondered if he was one of Lana or Theron’s agents. Or maybe even Vaylin’s. With the bounty placed on her head, even a Firrerreo would consider breaking out of their isolationist cocoon of ‘ _we don’t help humans_ ’ to turn her in. She paid him as quickly as she could fish credits out of her pocket, and the uneasy nagging feeling didn’t subside until she was offworld and far from the orbital spaceport and patrolling Eternal Fleet.

Once the shuttle was safely in hyperspace to Commenor, Senya geared up and did her hair back up into its trademark bun. She cleaned and dressed Arcann’s wound with the new supplies she bought, and went about doing the menial task of sorting their supplies before returning to the bunk next to Arcann. She fell asleep listening to his quieted breathing.

She spent the rest of the journey to Commenor at his bedside.

* * *

 

_Commenor_

_Commenor System, Ranchuk Sector_

_~6 days later_

 

Senya was glad when the shuttle finally dropped out of hyperspace, despite the daunting presence of the Eternal Fleet that surrounded the planet like a cloud of flies over honey.

The weariness she felt on the way to Firrerre was nothing compared to the exhaustion she felt now. Fretting over Arcann was the only thing keeping her from falling asleep on the spot. She stalled the shuttle and walked to the sleeping quarters.

Arcann’s condition had taken a turn for the worse. He’d developed a fever two days ago, and his skin was slick with sweat and scalding to the touch. She’d done her best to keep him cool, stripping him of most of his clothing and covering him with thinnest blanket she’d found. She’d kept him hydrated and fed to the best of her ability, but he ate and drank even less than he did on their trip to Firrerre.

“Arcann,” she told him softly. “I’m getting you to a hospital. The doctors there will patch you up.”

She wasn’t sure if he heard and understood her in his feverish state. There was also no guarantee that Commenorian doctors would help her, but she could ply their minds into obedience with simple Force mind tricks.

Maybe she shouldn’t have taken off the bandages to clean his wound. Despite her meticulousness in keeping it clean, it’d gotten infected, and instead of just fighting to stay alive from the chest wound, his body now fought a war on two fronts.

The two cold compresses that’d been used to reduce the swelling of his shattered knee had now been repurposed into cooling his forehead while wrapped in a thin towel. The painkillers that came with the medpac also had antipyretic abilities, and although Senya didn’t have Arcann take more than the recommended dose listed on the label, there weren’t many pills remaining in the bottle because they were the only things keeping the fever down.

Once she’d descended into the atmosphere and was far away enough from the imposing Eternal Fleet stationed outside, she let down her hair and removed her breastplate and gauntlets like she did on Firrerre and turned off the shields for the shuttle.

A blinking light on the dashboard indicated that air traffic personnel were trying to reach her. She’d no intention of landing, and she flew the shuttle past the speed limit. Just _slightly_  past the speed limit, but she still alerted the authorities for some reason. Or maybe the universe just chose to be unkind to her.

And somewhere in the distance behind her, she heard the shrill wailing of police sirens.

Senya swore viciously. She couldn’t afford to get in trouble with the local police force. She pressed a button, letting the call come through.

Commenorian air traffic control berated her over the comms, the terrible racket echoing around inside the shuttle and assaulting her ears. Senya didn’t let them finish their impressive diatribe.  She cleared her throat and yelled loudly over the din, “This is Adira Umdal of the Knights of Zakuul requesting emergency clearance to reach University of Commenor’s hospital. I’ve an injured man on board.”

There was a pause and some unhappy mumbling on the other end. “Clearance granted. I’ll have the two police shuttles escort you there.”

“Thank you,” Senya gratefully replied. She wasn’t too keen on having two police shuttles flanking her, but at least they were Commenorian police shuttles and not Zakuulan ones. Their sirens and  flashing red and blue lights were extremely effective at clearing a path through the congested air traffic straight to the emergency room of the hospital. In hindsight, was advantageous to have Commenorian police escort her and Arcann to the hospital as she didn’t have to waste time weaving her way through traffic.

The landing pad crew cleared her a small landing space and Senya manoeuvred the shuttle down. She must’ve knocked over something, as there was a loud crash outside followed by someone swearing, but she could deal with that later. The shuttle door slid open, and paramedics rushed into her shuttle.

“He’s in the sleeping quarters at the back,” Senya yelled at them, panic laced into her voice. She stood off to the side, her back to the wall so that the men and women could carry a stretcher into the cramped sleeping quarters.

A cry of pain from Arcann twisted her heart into a knot, and Senya bit the inside of her cheek to keep her tears at bay. Soon the men and women returned with her son on the stretcher, and another group of paramedics outside the shuttle helped them lower the stretcher onto the ground. She followed the paramedics off the shuttle and sprinted after them through the doors of the emergency room.

A nurse kept her pinned to the side, fighting her so that she wouldn’t interfere with the hectic commotion of men and women working on her son. Instinctively, Senya fought back and almost overpowered the smaller woman, but she realized what she was doing and surrendered, allowing herself to be dragged off to the side.

One of the doctors was yelling into his wrist link, relaying Arcann’s medical condition to the person on the other end. A doctor was attaching an oxygen mask onto her son’s face, one was cutting away at his shirt, another worked on cutting through the gauze bandages, and a nurse was attaching something to his upper arm, probably to monitor his blood pressure. Others were moving all over the room, busy following emergency room protocol.

A doctor came to her out of the flurry of people bustling about and introduced himself as Dr. Rennagen, and while he remained calm, a fiery anger was visible in his eyes. “He needs surgery. His chest wound is infected,” he told her simply. “When did he get injured?”

“Nine days ago,” Senya relayed back. “A rogue Knight slashed him across the chest with a lightsaber.”

Dr. Rennagen was putting a real effort in staying in control of his rage, but his expression morphed into one of horror once he heard what kind of weapon was used to create the slash. “And you bring him here now?” he asked incredulously, as if he couldn’t comprehend the extent of Senya’s stupidity.

“We were ambushed by Knights on the other side of the galaxy near Bakura, and they’re probably hunting us down.”

Dr. Rennagen nodded before activating his wrist link and telling some hospital code to his contact. He then barked a string of commands to his team, before turning to her, some understanding finally smoothing over his features. “We’ll have him in and out as soon as possible,” he told her quietly, the _‘so you can be on your way’_ left unsaid.

They soon had Arcann stabilized and wheeled him deeper into the hospital. Senya rushed towards the stretcher, but the nurse yanked her back. Panic washed through her. “Where’s he going?”

“They’re taking him into surgery,” the nurse gently repeated what the doctor told her less than a minute ago. “I can take you to the waiting room.”

A surreptitious glance down to the chest lapel told Senya that the nurse’s name was Miwa. Miwa led Senya through a series of corridors, and Senya pushed her hair off to the side to hide half of her face, shying away from any Knights she encountered. The hospital reminded her of the ones back home on Zakuul, where Knights stalking the halls was a common sight.

There was static coming from the Miwa’s wrist link, and Miwa held it close to her ear, listening intently. She then turned to Senya, fear in her eyes. “Dr. Rennagen told me that he heard patrols saying that they’re on the lookout for you,” she whispered. “I’m taking you to another waiting area.”

“Who’s looking for me? What did they specifically say?”

Miwa shook her head. “He never told me, but he overheard Knights looking for a rogue Knight of Zakuul, so we’re moving you to a private waiting area.”

Could it be a trap? It very well could be, but Senya didn’t really have a choice but to listen to and follow Miwa. Her hand rested close to her hip, close to her lightsaber. Arcann was here, and he needed serious help, help which she couldn’t offer. She wasn’t in a position to be choosy, so she stepped in line behind the nurse.

Despite her best attempts to memorize the path they took through the hospital, the mazelike corridors , the sterile white walls and fluorescent white lights blended together into one confusing mess, and although Senya refused to admit it to herself, she wouldn’t be able to fight her way out without getting hopelessly lost. And where was her shuttle anyway? It wasn’t allowed to remain parked on emergency room landing pad space, so a valet probably flew it off to a hangar elsewhere. She needed it close if she and Arcann had to make a speedy escape. She turned to Miwa. “Do you know where they’ve moved my shuttle?”

Miwa shook her head. “I can ask hospital parking control later, but let’s get to the waiting room first.”

It wasn’t long before Miwa led her to a private recovery room and punched a passcode into the keypad adjacent to the sliding door. “If there are people on the lookout for you, I advise you to stay put,” she told Senya in a low voice. “There’s a bathroom inside so don’t go walking out.”

“Do you know how long the surgery will take?” Senya wondered. “And how long will he need to recover?”

Miwa shook her head. “I don’t know. Dr. Rennagen will tell you all the details.”

“What of my shuttle?” Senya inquired again.

Miwa pressed a few buttons on her wrist link. “Hospital traffic control, this is Charge Nurse Miwa Mashayekhi from the ER asking for the whereabouts of Zakuulan shuttle that landed at the ER pad at sixteen forty-seven hours.”

Senya silently prayed to Scyva that her shuttle wasn’t stolen. Or worse: Zakuulan Knights rummaging through the nooks and crannies and finding her and Arcann’s belongings.

“Hold on,” the man on the other end instructed. Senya could hear some rustling, as if the man on the other end was scrolling through his datapad. “Your shuttle’s been moved to the west hangar, spot one-seven-two.”

“Thanks,” Miwa told the man before pressing something on her wrist link, cutting the channel. “That’s at the west end of the hospital but I’m not sure how far it is in relation to this room. I’ve got to go back to work, but wait here for Dr. Rennagen. And with those people looking for you, I’d advise you to stay here.”

“Thank you,” Senya started. Lacing her voice with the Force, she added, “You will not speak of our meeting and conversation with anybody else.”

“No, I will not,” Miwa replied automatically, a glazed look coming over her eyes.

And with that, Senya allowed Miwa to return to the emergency room. There was nothing Senya could do but pray to Scyva for her son’s safety through the surgery and catch up on lost sleep. Or, she could spend the next few long hours planning where to go next.

After her shopping trip at Firrerre, food security wasn’t an issue. They should have enough bandages, gauze and antiseptic wipes to last another week, but they needed more antipyretics and painkillers for Arcann. She could go make her purchases at the hospital’s pharmacy, but she didn’t know where it was and visiting it would increase her chances of running into Knights.

She and Arcann were going to be holed up in this hospital for a while. Arcann needed to spend at least another week or two to convalesce at the hospital before the doctors would allow him to be released. Afterwards, they could contact Samir, Lerak’s contact on Carratos, and hopefully find a place there to lie low.

Knowing that the Knights were on high alert searching for them at this very moment was nerve-wracking. Did they know that their prized quarry was Senya and Arcann, two of the most wanted fugitives in the galaxy? Or did they think that Adira Umdal just set of some alarm bells because she acted oddly? If they were on the lookout for her, she’d like to have her shuttle parked at the hanger closest to Arcann’s recovery room so that they could make their hasty escape if necessary.

She was too tired to think, so she turned to praying to the lady Scyva to give her son the strength to survive the surgery.

 

* * *

 

_University of Commenor Hospital, Commenor_

_Commenor System, Ranchuk Sector_

_Some hours later_

 

A knocking on the door sent Senya into a panic, her adrenaline and blood pressure spiking wildly. She must’ve passed out from exhaustion, but how long was she out for? She and Arcann arrived at the hospital sometime during the late afternoon, but it was now night, the room lit by the moonlight from one of Commenor’s moons filtering through the curtains. Remembering Miwa saying that she and Arcann arrived at the hospital at roughly sixteen hundred something hours, she glanced at the chrono by the bedside, and did the math. Her eyes widened. Arcann had been in surgery for nearly nine hours.

“It’s Dr. Rennagen,” the voice repeated again and again from the other side of the door.

Senya looked through the peep hole of the sliding door before pressing a button. The door slid open, and the white light from the hall blinded her. Dr. Rennagen stood far away from the door, his back pressed up against the wall of the hallway across from her. It was as if he feared that if he stood too close and startled her, she’d attack him with her lightsaber.

“Is A –,” she started, silently berating herself for nearly saying Arcann’s name, “Is my friend alright?”

“He’s alive,” Dr. Rennagen reassured her. “They’ll be wheeling him out to a private room to recover in a few minutes.”

“Thank you, doctor,” she breathed a sigh of relief, and silently prayed to the Lady Scyva for her mercy. “How long will he have to remain in the hospital to recover?”

A look of worry crossed the doctor’s features. “Three weeks at least.”

Senya nodded, face blank. She wasn’t going to show the doctor that she wished to travel with Arcann as soon as possible.

 “Your friend suffered damage to his diaphragm, left lung, and liver. He also has a fever. The surgeons repaired the damaged organs and cleaned out the infected tissue, but he’ll need to be on antibiotics and monitored,” Dr. Rennagen explained. He then dropped his voice to a low whisper. “There are Knights on the lookout for you, and we both know that you want this done off the books.”

Senya didn’t nod or shake her head. She wasn’t going to admit or deny anything. 

But then something very concerning caught her eye. They might've operated on Arcann's chest wound, but her son also needed a new cybernetic arm and a surgeon to attach it. She glanced at Dr. Rennagen. "Do you have a surgeon or specialist that can install a new cybernetic arm?"

"We did, but Exarchs killed them," he told her flatly.

Senya didn't know what to say, so she decided to remain silent. Unfortunately for Arcann, they'll just have to look for someone who specializes in cybernetics after he is discharged from the hospital.

"Anyways, we both want this off the books,” Dr. Rennagen quietly continued. “If you are who they’re looking for, then the hospital wants you on your way. We can’t have them attacking the hospital. They’ve already caused enough trouble as is.”

“Did they say who they were looking for?”

“Adara Ummer or something along those lines,” he replied, shrugging.

Senya bit the inside of her lip. A voice from the doctor’s wrist-link diverted both of their attention elsewhere. He held the wrist-link closer to his ear, listening. She caught part of the conversation in the silence of the empty room.

Dr. Rennagen turned to her. “They’ve wheeled him out to room two-five-eight for recovery. I’ll take you there.”

Senya nodded, following the doctor warily to Arcann’s recovery room, watchful of patrolling Knights. Dr. Rennagan was just as cautious, checking around every corner before walking out. It wasn’t a long trek, and Senya held her breath as Dr. Rennagen pressed the door code into the keypad.

The door hissed open, revealing a room almost identical to the one she waited in, only that there was a warm yellow glow radiating from a bedside light. Arcann was asleep in a hospital bed in the centre of the room. There was a mess of wires and tubing crisscrossing around him. He was hooked up to a heartbeat monitor, its soft and steady beeping a welcoming sign. An oxygen mask covered his nose and mouth. Next to the bed, there was an IV rack holding two drips. Dr. Rennagen explained that one was a saline and the other was an antibiotic drip.

“He’s on oxygen for now, just in case,” Dr. Rennagen explained further. “We’ll monitor him, and he shouldn’t need it after a few days. I’ll leave you alone and I’ll check on him again three hours later.”

Senya nodded appreciatively. “Thank you,” she whispered. And with the Force lacing her words, she told him like she did with Miwa to keep their presence in the hospital a secret.

Dr. Rennagen left and the door slid shut. Using the Force, she pulled the chair from the other side of the room and plopped down onto the seat, relishing in the soft cushioning on her back and bottom. She held Arcann’s hand in hers, careful not to touch the tubes and the needles from the drip. She bowed her head and quietly prayed to the Lady Scyva.

When she finished her prayer, Senya rested her face against the soft space of available mattress next to her son’s arm. The week’s accumulated exhaustion was too much for her and despite the nagging worry of patrols on the lookout for her and Arcann, Senya drifted off into a much-needed sleep.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Senya and Arcann just can't catch a break.

_University of Commenor Hospital, Commenor_

_Commenor System, Ranchuk Sector_

_~2 weeks later_

 

Senya watched the bustle of air traffic through a sliver of window that wasn’t covered by the curtain, her eyes following the trajectories of the vehicles until they disappeared behind a skyscraper or traveled out of sight. She’d then focus on a new aircraft until it moved out of view as well.

Every glint of gold in the afternoon sun gave her goosebumps and made her breath catch in her throat. Those glittering shuttles were almost always Zakuulan, and the galactic turmoil these days ascertained the passengers to be Knights or Exarchs. Or both. On more than one occasion, a shuttle had flown by close enough to her window that she saw the pilot and a few Knights through the shuttle’s tinted windshield. How long would it take before somebody flying by discovered that the galaxy’s two greatest fugitives were holed up in a hospital room only a dozen metres away?

She and Arcann had been on Commenor for nearly two weeks. She’d been extremely vigilant at all hours of the day, especially with Arcann being unable to keep watch for long. The fear of being ambushed by Mirreah or Vaylin’s forces prevented her from being able to fully rest, and she had to remind herself that the consistency of hospital life with its checkups and delivery of meals three times a day was an illusion of safety that could be dissolve at any moment. Her fatigue and paranoia intensified with each passing day that they spent in the hospital, and it was slowly driving her insane. If she were to be honest to herself, she was dumbstruck that she and Arcann had lasted this long in hiding.

Neither of them had stepped foot outside the recovery room since their admission to the hospital. Arcann hadn’t for obvious reasons, but she hadn’t either due to the suggestions from the head nurse for their own safety. Normally Senya wouldn’t have thought twice about looking at the corners of a room, but now she couldn’t bear to, at least not while she remained at this hospital. Whenever she looked at the corners of their room, the room seemed to close in on her. _Maybe this is what being in prison is like_ , she wondered.

Being cooped up for two weeks was made worse by the lack of awareness of the galaxy’s current state of affairs. Senya had no access to a datapad or anything that connected to the holonet, so all of the news she was privy to was provided by Miwa whenever the charge nurse brought their meals to them, and even so, the nurse was reluctant to divulge too much. Senya understood the mistrust that existed between them, but she was more concerned that the nurse was tight-lipped was because she was an informant for either the Alliance or Vaylin.

The Alliance had strong ties to Commenor. One of the first things Mirreah did after establishing the Alliance was destroying the orbiting Star Fortress and creating an elaborate smuggling operation that ensured the planet’s hospitals received the necessary medical supplies to continue functioning despite the Eternal Empire’s crippling sanctions.

Senya turned away from the window to stare at Arcann. Her son was sound asleep, and it was comforting to watch the gentle rise and fall of his chest while he slept. For someone who’d endured such grievous injuries, Arcann’s recovery was nothing short of remarkable in the two weeks that they’d spent in the hospital. He was still hooked up to the heartbeat monitor to evaluate his condition, but he no longer relied on the respirator to help him breathe. The saline drip was long gone, and Dr. Rennagen had said that the antibiotic drip would be taken out the day after tomorrow. The infection in Arcann’s chest wound had run its course, and she knew that he looked forward to having antibiotics administered using medicine cups instead of through the bothersome IV.

The corners of Senya’s mouth curled upwards in a slight smile. Other than regaining his strength, she was pleased to see that Arcann had regained his appetite and readily ate the meals offered to him. During their travels to Firrerre and to Commenor, he’d eaten sparingly, but now that he was better, he’d eaten as if catching up on lost meals was a possibility. She’d given him her portions even if it meant she’d go hungry until the next time Miwa visited, and whatever non-perishables they didn’t eat were hoarded away for later.

All mothers, regardless of what position they were in economically, were forever worried that their children didn’t have enough to eat, and watching Arcann eat with such enthusiasm brought back happy memories where Senya and all three of her children sat down together for every meal. Thexan, Arcann and Vaylin were adorable as children, and even more so with their cheeks stuffed full of food.

_But Thexan is gone, and Vaylin wants nothing to do with me_ , the voice inside her head cruelly reminded her. She shook her head to rid herself of unpleasant thoughts and tried to replace them with happy ones.

_I still have Arcann_. _And that’s enough of a reason to be happy_.

Senya glanced up. Arcann’s face seemed more relaxed, as if he subconsciously sensed the twinge of contentment within her. If the Old Gods were good, they’d give him the time to fully convalesce and regain his strength. At Arcann’s request, she’d helped him practice walking every day since the moment he’d felt good enough and had the energy to get out of bed. His chest had been stiff and sore, hindering his movements so that he could only stagger slowly. Despite her gently reminding him that he’d suffered a fatal wound, survived against all odds, and that he’d been recovering far more quickly than expected, Arcann’s frustration and impatience at his body’s inability to return to a state that met his standards had ignited the old, fiery anger that had lain dormant in him since Mirreah had slashed his chest open. There wasn’t much Senya could’ve done to soothe his temper, but the fear must’ve shown in her face whenever his temper had flared as Arcann had attempted to quash each outburst.

Senya did, however, give him credit for being very receptive to spending his time awake in planning their next steps together. Other than meditating, it was the only mentally stimulating thing that they could both do within the confines of the recovery room. She’d told him about the possibility of hiding out on Garqi where they’d be far away from Zakuul and still have access to a hospital. She’d also told him about Samir Durrun, her contact on Carratos and how they might be able to lie low amongst the billions of people in the ecumenopolis and still have access to an off-the-grid doctor.

“There’s a spaceport close to the hospital,” Arcann mumbled to her, snapping her out of her thoughts. Senya had been so engrossed with her contemplations that she failed to notice that her son had woken up. “We can stock up on supplies there. Let’s make a list so we don’t forget.”

Senya wished she had a datapad. Maybe if she recited the list of items until it was ingrained into her memory, they wouldn’t forget. “We need gauze, bandages, antibacterial ointment, painkillers –”

“Kolto patches, medical tape, antiseptics, basically entire medkits,” Arcann interrupted. “Stims? Did we use any? I can’t remember.”

Senya shook her head, remembering how she was afraid to do so. “No, and we still have the medisensor, the scissors, and the cold compresses from the medkit that came with the shuttle.”

Arcann pondered for a minute. “There’s no guarantee that our shuttle is still in the hangar. Which hangar was it?”

“I don’t remember,” Senya confessed, wincing when she saw an irritated, almost angry light flicker in Arcann’s golden eyes. She held her breath in anticipation of an angry outburst. “I’ll ask the nurse the next time she comes by. Worst comes to worst, we can steal a ship.”

Arcann noticed the unease in his mother’s eyes and sighed in an effort to wish his disappointment away. “We can convince that nurse to go raid a storage room instead of going to a spaceport,” he murmured.

Senya hadn’t thought of that. If they could Force persuade Miwa into swiping medical supplies, they wouldn’t have to head to a spaceport and risk being exposed. “Good call. I’ll try to convince her to go raid the kitchens as well.” That might be pushing it as nurses most likely didn’t have access to the back of the kitchen, but she didn’t tell Arcann that.

But still, she would try. What could it hurt to do so?

She and Arcann spent the rest of the day planning and when he was up for it, walking around in their room. With the time she had, Senya contemplated their luck, and wasn’t sure which she should be more awestruck with: her son’s swift recovery, or how they’d remained hidden for as long as they had with Dr. Rennagen and Miwa’s efforts. They’d been safe for far longer than her own expectations, but she couldn’t and wouldn’t allow herself to be lulled into complacency with the sense of security that the hospital offered them. She’d prayed to all of the Old Gods every night that they could remain hidden until Arcann was well enough to be discharged from the hospital, but she didn’t need to be a Scion to foresee the future and know that their luck had almost run out.

 

* * *

 

_University of Commenor Hospital, Commenor_

_Commenor System, Ranchuk Sector_

_3 days later_

Senya wasn’t asleep yet, but the sudden chorus of bloodcurdling screams outside dispelled any drowsiness she might’ve had. Next to her, Arcann’s heartbeat monitor beeped frantically. “What’s that?” Arcann asked her worriedly, his voice rough from sleep.

Senya didn’t answer him. She sprinted to the window to lift up a corner of the curtain so she could peep outside. At first glance, there wasn’t anything amiss, but then it dawned on her that there was something that looked like a new skyscraper with rows of pale blue lights. This skyscraper wasn’t there the night before and was oddly shaped like a cross, and all of the air traffic seemed to be fleeing away from it. The sky was dark and it was a new moon, and Senya squinted to locate the source of the disturbance.

Even with the inky sky, she still made out the outline of an Eternal Fleet ship in the atmosphere, its turrets aimed at the hospital.

She glanced up at horror. The ‘stars’ in the sky tonight weren’t stars. They were the lights of the Eternal Fleet.

“The Eternal Fleet,” Senya whispered.

“The Fleet’s here?” Arcann questioned, the panic settling in his voice. Senya didn’t even realize that she’d voiced her observations out loud for him to hear. She could only watched, stunned as the closest ship started firing.

There was nothing Senya could do but watch, open-mouthed, as an entire hospital tower burst into flames so bright that a second sun appeared in the sky. She briefly saw the silhouette of twisted rebar against the flames before the tower slowly crumbled to the ground.

_How many doctors and patients were in there?_ Senya wondered as she tried her best to ignore the shockwaves of the Force emanating from all the lives that were so suddenly extinguished.

“CODE ORANGE. THIS IS NOT A DRILL. REPEAT: THIS IS NOT A DRILL,” a voice immediately blared over the public announcement system.

Focusing her eyes below, she saw a squadron of Zakuulan shuttles unloading Knights, Exarchs, and Vaylin’s infamous Horizon Guards. The Horizon Guards were notorious enough that even she’d heard of them during their two weeks of isolation. “They’re here,” Senya announced breathlessly. She turned around to see him still staring out the window in shock, and in his eyes was an emotion he wasn’t allowed to feel: fear. She rushed back to help her struggling son out of bed.

Hearing footsteps outside, Senya instinctively stood in front of her son and the door. She ignited her lightsaber, the blue blade illuminating the room with an eerie glow. The sliding door opened with a pneumatic hiss, and Senya was briefly blinded by the hallway lights flooding into the room.

The person on the other end of her lightsaber immediately dropped something onto the floor and raised both hands in surrender. “It’s Charge Nurse Miwa,” the person repeated again and again in terror.

Senya stepped back and withdrew her lightsaber from the nurse’s face, but didn’t deactivate it. The frightened nurse fumbled for the button to close the door, and the room soon returned into darkness save for the blue glow of Senya’s lightsaber. Miwa then groped around for the light switch and a dim light soon illuminated the room. “You don’t have much time. They’re looking for you and your friend,” Miwa said breathlessly. Senya opened her mouth, but the nurse cut her off. “I’ve a plan to get you both out, so listen to me and don’t argue.”

Senya nodded. Miwa picked up the bundle she’d dropped and tossed it at Senya.  

It was a nurse’s scrubs.

“Put this on, put the mask on as well, and follow my lead,” Miwa instructed. “Do something about those long sleeves. They'll know you're not a nurse if you don't.”

Senya took off her Knight’s shirt, and cut off the sleeves with her lightsaber before slipping it back on. She threw on the scrubs, and frowned when she noticed that her boots were still visible. If she had to look like a nurse, she couldn’t walk around with Zakuulan Knight-issued boots.

“The boots,” Senya worriedly said.

“They won’t be seeing your feet,” Miwa reassured her as she struggled to help Arcann back into bed.

While Senya worked on disguising herself, she eyed Miwa warily. She watched the nurse unhook Arcann from the heartbeat monitor before issuing a short and quiet command to him. Senya couldn’t quite catch what the nurse had said, but she watched in disbelief as Arcann pretended to go back to sleep and allowed Miwa to throw a white sheet over him.

“What –” Senya started, eyes narrowing incredulously at the nurse.

“Don’t question me,” Miwa snapped back. “Help me move this to the hall.”

Senya did as she was told, helping push Arcann’s gurney while Miwa guided it out of the room and into the hallway. On the way out, she telekinetically grabbed the pack of supplies she and Arcann had been hoarding since the first night of their stay on Commenor. She followed Miwa silently as the charge nurse led them out the hallway and to the nearest turbolift.

Once they were in the turbolift, Miwa whispered, “We’re going to the morgue.”

Senya nodded wordlessly. _This is just outrageous_ , she thought. It was a brazen move, but it might work. If she and Arcann suppressed their Force auras, she might be able to pass off as an overworked nurse and he just might be able to pass off as a corpse as long as nobody bothered lifting up the sheet. It would be something indeed if they succeeded fleeing this hospital right under Vaylin’s nose.

She and the nurse stood in silence until the turbolift doors opened to what looked like a service hallway. Instead of the sterile white flooring and blinding walls she’d gotten accustomed to, this hallway was all duracrete except for the piping that snaked in parallel on the walls and ceiling.

“I’m taking you to your shuttle,” Miwa told her.

Senya could sense Miwa’s nervousness and the split second of dread every time she peeked over a corner. While the nurse kept a poker face and walked with a sense of purpose, her anxiety was palpable. Senya felt it radiating off of her as if it was body heat on a sweltering day.

A large explosion rocked the corridor, showering the three of them with duracrete dust. The lights flickered ominously, threatening to leave them in darkness. Senya stared at Miwa, and the nurse’s horrified expression mirrored her own. “Hurry,” she urged the nurse, who instantly complied.

Senya and Miwa made their way through the mazelike service corridors, dodging debris dropping from the ceiling and careening into walls whenever the bombardment shook the hallways too strongly. “We’re almost there,” Miwa huffed, pulling on the gurney and running with Senya pushing from behind.

Miwa peered over the corner and instantly pulled her head back and pushed the bed backwards, the wheels rolling over Senya’s toes. Senya looked at her dubiously, but the blanched face of the nurse made her blood run cold. “They’re in the corridors,” she whispered to Senya hysterically. “Go back!”

The Knights hadn’t rounded the bend, but Senya knew that they’ve seen Miwa and sensed her distress, as she heard the familiar snap-hiss of lightsabers, the clanking of boots and quickened steps. She sensed Arcann’s unease as well, and prayed that he would stay still and not blow their cover.

Senya leaned down to his face and whispered to him, “Dont worry, I’ll handle it.”

Senya ignited her blade, and rounded the bend. The Knights didn’t have time to register that there was a nurse wielding a lightsaber before Senya lifted all four of them up with the Force and slammed them repeatedly against the duracrete wall. When they no longer cried out in shock and pain, she dropped all four of them to the floor, where they lay, unmoving.

Senya turned back to the nurse. “Let’s move,” she insisted.

Miwa didn’t need telling twice, resuming to pull the bed at the front while Senya returned to push the gurney from the back. “We’re almost there,” Miwa told her. “Just two more corners.”

They rounded those two corners without incident, but after the encounter with the Knights, Senya dreaded corners, even though they were in the least-visited part of the hospital.

“Your shuttle’s at the far end of the hangar,” Miwa told her breathlessly while she pressed a code into a keypad next to a large sliding durasteel door. Senya groaned inwardly. They were so close, yet they were still so far away.

The door hissed open, revealing a large hangar at half capacity. The large magnetic shield was untouched and intact, and beyond that, freedom awaited. Even with Vaylin’s forces storming the hospital, the hospital itself was large enough that it would take them time to deduce where their targets were. Nonetheless, Senya felt a sense of dread, which Miwa also picked up on. “Where is it?” Senya urged the nurse as the two women pushed the gurney as fast as they could past the various spacecraft.

“It’s the third one from the wall. See the golden tail?” Miwa pointed.

Senya looked up. She couldn’t see whatever Miwa saw, so that still meant that their shuttle was still a hundred or so metres away. She pushed on the gurney and ran as fast as she could, counting the metres they still had left to go as they closed onto the shuttle. They might’ve made it halfway across the hangar before Senya saw it; even in the dim lighting, the golden emblem of the Eternal Throne embossed onto the tail glittered.

Senya suddenly felt an extreme sense of danger, but before she could push the gurney any faster, there was a bright flash of light, a wave of heat, and she felt herself being thrown in the air. She was in the air for what seemed like a long time before falling and hitting something so hard that she blacked out.

 

* * *

 

The acrid smell of burning plastisteel assaulted Senya’s nostrils. She coughed, her ribs hurt, and she tasted blood in her mouth. Something wet was leaking from her nose, although it didn’t feel broken. She surveyed the destruction around her. The magnetic shield was destroyed, and a stray rocket or turbolaser blast had hit some of the parked spacecraft which have since gone up in flames. Without the shield, the cool nighttime breeze would periodically blow in, giving her a reprieve from the sweltering heat emanating from the burning rubble.

Senya desperately looked around for her shuttle. By some stroke of luck, their shuttle was still intact, the light of the flames turning the golden emblem on its tail into a fiery beacon for freedom. The shuttle wasn’t too far away, but with her injured ribs, Senya knew it was going to be an exhausting and painful walk to get there. Worse, Arcann and Miwa were nowhere to be seen.

Senya stood up as quickly as she could, and a stabbing pain in her right ankle made her stumble and fall down on all fours. She and took a few deep breaths to ready herself for another attempt at standing. Drops of blood appeared on the ground, and Senya wiped away at her nose, feeling some of the blood smear across her cheek.

_Arcann needs you. Go find him_ , the voice in her head encouraged. Clutching her injured side and fighting the nausea that threatened to overwhelm her, Senya stood up carefully, putting her weight onto her left leg. She gingerly placed her right foot down on the ground and gradually moved it up and down to simulate a walking motion. She took a few experimental steps, realizing that she could still walk as long as she favoured her good leg. _It’s not too bad_ , she told herself. _Best case scenario is that I sprained it, and the worst case scenario is that it’s broken_. _But it’s something I can fix as long as I can get offworld._

Now she needed to find her son. “Arcann?” she called out weakly. _Perhaps he and Miwa made it to the shuttle?_ She couldn’t see him nearby, although she felt his presence through the Force. She sensed that he was in pain. “Arcann?”

No reply. If there was, she couldn’t hear it over the crackling flames and the continued explosions from the bombardment. Senya hobbled as quickly as she could past the flaming wreckage. Through the shimmering heat waves, she spotted the gurney, lying on its side.

Senya worked her way into a limping run. _Please let them be okay_ , she prayed to Scyva as she wobbled towards the gurney, eyes scanning for her son and the nurse.

It didn’t take her long to find Miwa’s crumpled body. Senya reached out with the Force, feeling for a flicker of life. Nothing.

A cursory glance at Miwa didn’t show any obvious signs of damage, but that meant she must’ve succumbed soon after the explosions started from a head injury or from internal bleeding. “I’m sorry,” Senya apologized guiltily to the nurse as she staggered past the body. Miwa had given her life in an attempt to get them offworld. She’d probably suspected, if she hadn’t already known, Senya and Arcann’s true identities and still helped them in spite of that.

Senya couldn’t do anything more for Miwa, but she can still do something for her son, if she could locate him. That way, the nurse's sacrifice wouldn't have been for naught.

She still couldn’t see Arcann anywhere. If Miwa’s body and the gurney were found relatively close together, her son couldn’t be too far away. She still felt his Force aura, so she knew he was alive. She gave a sorrowful glance at the dead nurse, gritted her teeth, and stumbled towards the shuttle, calling out her son’s name whenever she caught her breath.

She didn’t make it too far away from Miwa and the gurney when she smelled something familiar. It wasn’t fire or spilled fuel. It was blood. Hot and metallic, it hung around the air like a fog. But was it Arcann’s blood she smelled? She didn’t want to think about it, but given the strangely pristine state of Miwa’s corpse, it could very well be his.

And for her to be able to smell blood through her nosebleed and the the acrid scent of burning plastisteel, she knew there had to be a significant amount nearby. The shimmering heat waves made it hard to pinpoint the source of the smell, and the air around her scalded her throat whenever she inhaled. Still, she forced herself to breathe so that she had enough air in her lungs to yell out her son’s name. But there was still no answer. _Did he actually make it to the shuttle?_

She scanned the hangar feverishly for Arcann, but still to no avail. She pushed some of the rubble away with the Force, hoping to see her son on the other side.

Arcann wasn’t there; instead, she located a pool of semi-congealed blood and a smear leading towards the shuttle, as if someone bleeding profusely had tried crawling his way towards an escape.

“Arcann,” she cried out hoarsely as she stumbled as quickly as she could to the shuttle. She reached out for the sliding door, noticing fresh blood smeared on the side. It was as if Arcann had gripped onto it with a bloody hand for support while he climbed into the cabin. The door hissed open, and Senya was greeted with the snap-hiss of a golden lightsaber. Instinctively, she ignited her own lightsaber in response.

Her initial shock turned into her relief when she noticed that it was her son wielding the blade. But that relief soon turned into horror. Arcann sat on the floor of the shuttle in his own blood, and once he realized that he was staring at his mother and not some hostile stranger, he slumped over in agony. His lightsaber rolled out of his bloody palm, and his good hand went back to clutch at his chest in a vain attempt to stop the bleeding. “The explosion –” he gasped.

“I know,” Senya answered sadly. Whatever healing progress he’d made in the last two weeks had been rendered moot. Arcann was of utmost importance to her; if he perished here in this hangar there really was no point in her living, especially if Vaylin didn’t want her at all. “Let me help –”

Arcann brushed her off. “Help me when we get offworld."

“You’re bleeding –”

“Go!” Arcann barked at her.

That was enough to get her to the pilot’s seat. She activated the cloaking device and eased the shuttle out of the ruined hangar and away into the night, putting as much distance as she could between their shuttle and the carnage behind them. When they were far away enough from the hospital, she guided the shuttle skyward, stealthily flying past the Eternal Fleet ships that were already in the atmosphere.

The bulk of the Eternal Fleet covered the space around Commenor in grids, firing down at the planet. Only a few were in the atmosphere itself. She was almost out of the atmosphere, and in the distance, she spied Vaylin’s flagship.

Vaylin must’ve sensed their presence, as Senya felt unrestrained rage and sadistic glee permeating the insides of the shuttle. Arcann sensed it too, and she heard him wheeze in a breath. A light started blinking on the comms, and Senya wisely chose not to answer it. She knew it was Vaylin, but didn't want to give her and the slicers any information on the frequency she currently used.

“She’s headed this way,” Senya breathed, watching the flagship turn towards them. The Fleet continued to fire on Commenor, making it difficult for her to find gaps in between the ships to jump into hyperspace.

Senya cautiously piloted the shuttle out of the atmosphere and into space. The turbolaser fire was too thick for her to be fly the shuttle safely between the ships. But then she had an idea. _If I can dive down quickly enough, I can escape the Fleet by going under them._ “Arcann, get yourself to a seat and strap yourself in.”

Senya waited until she heard a ‘click’ from Arcann’s seatbelt behind her, and she pushed the accelerator to the maximum and pushed the controls as far down as they could go. Their shuttle dove steeply, avoiding the bulk of the Fleet. Senya sharply pulled the controls up and the shuttle came out of its steep dive. Pulling it out of the dive took longer than she thought. The Eternal Fleet grids were now above their shuttle, and Senya knew it would take time for the ships to rotate the turrets to fire at their shuttle. She pushed the accelerator to the maximum, praying that the shuttle could withstand the strain. Behind her, she heard the renewed sounds of battle from turbolaser fire, but the Fleet wasn’t firing at them.

“The Outlander,” Arcann coughed.

Senya sensed her too, the single bright Force aura unmistakeably belonging to her former Commander. But when she concentrated, she noticed there was also a dark undercurrent that ebbed beneath Mirreah’s Force signature, and she couldn’t decipher what it was or who it belonged to. She wasn’t about to stay here long enough to find out.

What did matter to Senya right now was that the Alliance commander had just come out of hyperspace right into the thick of battle, so Vaylin would be her main focus and not Arcann. And if they didn’t escape into hyperspace soon, they’d get caught up in an omnicannon blast along with most of the Fleet. “Let them take care of each other,” Senya told her son as she pulled the lever next to the controls. She watched the stars elongate for a split second before the windshield blacked over as their shuttle escaped into hyperspace.

Senya pressed a button on the dashboard, and the galactic map illuminated the insides of the shuttle. She had absolutely no idea which direction they were going. She just cared that she and her son were as far away from Mirreah and Vaylin as possible.

But where should they go? There weren’t many choices close by, and Arcann’s injury prevented them from traveling too far from Commenor.

Senya zoomed in on the galactic map. Cona and Celegia had planetary conditions incompatible with human life. Telti housed Skytrooper factories, at least they did the last time she checked. Hok was heavily controlled by the Eternal Empire due to its crystal mines, and Carida had been converted into an offworld training ground for Exarchs and Knights training to be Exarchs.

In hindsight, she shouldn’t have traveled to Commenor due to the Eternal Empire’s industrial interests being nearby, but Arcann needed treatment and it was the only hospital she knew where doctors were willing to turn their heads the other way and do things off the books. So she had taken the gamble, and it seems like she’d lost.

Manaan was a tempting but suicidal choice. It was so close to Commenor that they could get there in a day, and it had the best medical facilities the galaxy had to offer. However, the Eternal Empire held onto Manaan obsessively since it was the galaxy’s sole supplier of kolto, and the planet remained under the iron grip of Eternal Empire control despite the Alliance’s repeated attempts to liberate it. There was absolutely no way that she and Arcann could sneak in past all of Vaylin’s patrols, get medical treatment from the Selkath, and escape without being noticed.

Humbarine was an ecumenopolis just like Coruscant and Carratos, and it lay next to Commenor on the Trellen Trade Route. She and Arcann could get there in less than day. The entire planet was a city; there should be enough hospitals where she can get Arcann medical help, and afterwards they could disappear into the crowds of refugees. But it would be teeming with Republic, Alliance, and Vaylin’s forces.

_Really, Humbarine’s the only choice_. Sighing, Senya entered the coordinates into the navicomp, knowing that both Vaylin and Mirreah would be expecting her to go to there after escaping Commenor. _I’ll take those chances_. _The skirmish over Commenor would keep them occupied for the time being._

With their new destination figured out, she turned her attention to Arcann. He looked up her and groaned in pain. She limped over to him and helped him to his feet. She ignored her protesting ankle when she shifted his weight onto her, and they slowly hobbled over to the sleeping quarters together, her free hand placed against the walls for support.

The medical supplies she’d bought on Firrerre were still in the bunk next to his, much to her relief. They were of critical importance now, since the pack of supplies she and Arcann had been saving up back at the hospital had been lost in the explosion at the hangar. She pushed the blanket away with the Force, and gently helped her son lie down on the bed.

“Water. Please,” Arcann gasped, to which Senya gladly obliged. She helped him sit up again and gently tilted the glass against his mouth. Arcann drained the glass thirstily, and she fetched another glass for him.

After her son drained the second glass, Senya helped him lie down again. The blood on his shirt had congealed, but looking at the colour, she could tell that he was still bleeding slowly. “Can you roll up your shirt?” Senya asked, pointing to the blood. “I’ll see what I can do to patch you up.”

Arcann slowly rolled up the fabric, and she examined at the wound. The explosion had opened up the stitches, and there was so much blood that she wasn’t sure how much internal damage was dealt. Regardless, the first thing to do was to clean in and around the wound, so Senya went to wet a towel and some of the gauze under the tap and returned to softly wipe away at dried and congealing blood. Once that was done, she grabbed the medisensor lying on the bunk.

The medisensor stated her that her son’s chest gash was the only pressing concern. He’d been extremely lucky to escape with only the reopened chest wound. Senya was sure she’d sported rib fractures, a broken ankle, and possible internal damage that might become apparent after her adrenaline levels tanked. And even she considered herself lucky. Miwa outright died.

But Senya could worry about herself later. She tore open the antiseptic wipes and sniffed for the telltale scent of alcohol. She’d taken care to purchase non-alcohol wipes, but even so, there was no guarantee that they wouldn’t sting when applied to the wound. “This could hurt,” Senya warned as she started dabbing around the slash.

She watched his face, waiting for it to contort in agony as she cleaned the gash. Luckily for him, they didn’t sting. She used the Force to probe for hidden injuries and heal what she could on his chest, and when she couldn’t heal him anymore, she placed kolto patches over the gash and secured them with bandages wrapped around his torso and medical tape.

“It should be good now,” she told her son as she helped him lie down. Using the damp towel, she delicately wiped away at the grime and blood, half-expecting Arcann to protest in discomfort when she cleaned the scarred side of his face.

“I’m sorry,” Arcann mumbled to her, "for yelling at you earlier."

She kissed his forehead. “It’s alright, son,” she said softly. She wasn’t sure what he was sorry about, and it took her a few more seconds before she realized he was referring to their desperate escape from the hangar. She gently picked up the blanket from the floor and placed it carefully over her son. After she’d tucked him in, she picked up the medisensor and waved it over his sleeping form.

_He’s stable for now_. _Now you need to patch yourself up_.

Senya slowly sat down on the bunk facing Arcann’s. The medisensor confirmed her suspicions: she had fractured ribs and a broken ankle, but they weren’t injuries she couldn’t fix with the Force. _At least I don’t have internal bleeding_ , she thought as she clutched her side and slowly imagined the Force knitting fractured bone together.

She took in slow and deep breaths, feeling the tightness in her chest disappear with each exhale. Once that was done, she reached down for her right foot and tried easing the boot off of it without aggravating her broken ankle. Normally the boot would’ve easily slipped right off, but the swelling must’ve set in already. Senya winced as she pulled off her boot past the swollen joint.

Her ankle hadn’t started to bruise yet, but it was red and swollen. Senya imagined torn tendons reattaching and bones mending, and she felt most of the ankle pain ebb away. Unfortunately, the swelling would still take time to subside but she could walk again without much difficulty.

She made a beeline for the refresher. Senya’s reflection in the mirror caught her attention. Her face was black with grime, and her nosebleed had stopped sometime during their escape, leaving a trickle of dried blood that ended up in a dessicated pool on her upper lip. There was a blood smear from her nose to her cheek. She sported purple bruises on her left cheek and eyebrow. The blue-grey scrubs she wore were blackened with ash and peppered with specks of dried blood.

Senya exhaled and turned on the tap. She splashed cool water on her face and neck, relishing the feeling as she did so and not caring that the water had seeped into the collar of her shirt. She watched the water in the sink turn from clear to brown and then to dark grey before changing back to clear. Once she’d cleaned up, she took a towel and fetched the cold compresses from the kitchenette. Back in the sleeping quarters, she fashioned herself a crude ankle brace with the towel, cold compresses, and some medical tape. She leaned back to admire her handiwork which was a marvel of creative engineering. Necessity bred ingenuity. The brace wasn't there to support a broken ankle now, but she needed the swelling to subside so she could slip on her boots without trouble. Now she could try to sleep.

Senya removed the soiled scrubs, dimmed the lights, and laid down on her bunk. She was in a dire need of a shower, but sleep was more important to her right now. She pulled the thin blanket over her fatigued body, and closed her eyes.

But despite the adrenaline crash, her body refused to let her doze off. She knew she’d need all the energy she could muster once they arrived on Humbarine, and even as she tried again and again, her body wouldn't let her rest. She couldn’t sleep for now, but at least that meant she could enjoy the small comfort of watching Arcann sleep and dream instead.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm trying to capture Chapter 16 through Senya's perspective, and I'm attempting to explain some of the choices she made that left me scratching my head (i.e. she should've just jumped into hyperspace instead of slowing down to talk with someone whom she knew could shoot her down in an instant). I was also disappointed that there were no cutscenes shown of her battling Vaylin, which was implied in Chapter 16, so I wrote a little bit of how I imagined the battle to be like to fill in the gaps. I also wrote a little bit about what I thought Senya would've done after the jump into hyperspace just to make her and Arcann's departure feel a little more complete.


End file.
